Eighty-seven people are diagnosed with cancer every day in the West Midlands, new figures reveal.

There were 16,497 cases of cancer diagnosed in men and 15,192 in women in the West Midlands in 2016, according to figures released today, a total of 31,689 new cases, excluding diagnoses for non-melanoma skin cancers, the equivalent of 87 a day.

The most common types of cancer registered in the West Midlands were breast cancer in women, 4,678 cases, prostate cancer in men, 4,344 cases, and colorectal cancer in men, 2,156 cases.

There are also regional variations in how likely people are to be diagnosed with some types of cancer.

Women in the West Midlands are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with thyroid cancer as women in the East Midlands, with 9.2 cases per 100,000 women in 2016, compared to 5.5 new cases per 100,000 in the East Midlands.

For every 100 cases of cancer diagnosed in men in 2016, there were 48 deaths, while for women there were 45 deaths for every 100 diagnoses. However, these figures are likely to include the deaths of people diagnosed before 2016.

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Across England, in 2016, there were 303,135 cancers registered (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers), according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics. This is equivalent to 828 new cases being diagnosed each day during 2016.

Breast (15.2%), prostate (13.4%), lung (12.7%) and colorectal (11.5%) cancers continue to account for more than half of the cancer registrations in England for all ages combined.

More cancers were registered in men (155,019) than women (148,116) and across the majority of cancer sites, more men were diagnosed with cancer than women; this is a persistent feature of the data, as reported in previous cancer registration years.

Cancer is primarily a disease of older people, with adults aged 65 years and over accounting for 65.3% of the total cancers registered in 2016.

Age-standardised rates of cancer registrations per 100,000 people have increased in both men and women for the period 1995 to 2016; during this period, cancer incidence rates have increased from 648.8 to 663.4 per 100,000 men and from 469.6 to 541.1 per 100,000 women.

For men, cancer incidence increased from 671.0 per 100,000 males in 2006 to a peak of 704.4 per 100,000 in 2013. Since 2013, a reduction in the prostate cancer incidence (from 192.1 per 100,000 in 2013 to 173.7 in 2016) has contributed to the overall cancer incidence for men falling to 663.4 per 100,000 males (in 2016).

The average rate of cancer incidence in England was 593.2 per 100,000 people, but this varied across the country from 556.7 per 100,000 people in London to 630.3 per 100,000 people in the North East.