ABSTRACT
Colorectal cancer is one of the so-called diseases of Western affluence, being common in North America, Australasia, north and western Europe and the River Plate region of South America, and relatively rare in Africa, Asia and the Andean countries of South and Central America. Within Europe the disease has a relatively low incidence in the south and relatively high in the central European countries such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, as well as in the Benelux countries and the British Isles. This has been discussed in detailed in Chapter 4.
