Hidden Reservoirs: Six Decades of Autopsy Data Reveal the Growing Burden of Undiagnosed Cancer

Highlights

• Analysis of 1.48 million autopsies over 66 years in Japan reveals that 55.2% of cases included a cancer diagnosis.
• The prevalence of multiple primary cancers increased nearly eightfold, from 1.8% in 1974 to 14.4% in 2023.
• Latent cancers—malignancies undiagnosed during life—were detected in 7.4% of autopsies by 2023, up from 1.7% in 1986.
• Approximately 7.3% of these latent cancers already exhibited metastatic spread at the time of autopsy.

Introduction: Mapping the Submerged Iceberg of Malignancy