Binge Drinking Frequency and Mortality from Cancer of Oropharynx and Esophagus: The Kangwha Cohort Study

Excessive alcohol consumption causes 75,000 deaths each year in the United States, and it is the third leading preventable cause of death. Binge drinking accounts for more than half of these deaths (CDC, 2004). Binge drinking is quite prevalent in Korea. According to The Third Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2005, 46.3 % of male adults were heavy drinkers in Korea (Lee et al., 2010). In some studies, alcohol consumption has been associated with risks of upper digestive tract cancer, liver cancer and colon cancer as well as breast cancer (Gronbaek et al., 1998; Seitz et al., 1998; La Vecchia, 2007; Bongaerts et al., 2008; Fan et al., 2008; Yi et al., 2010). Binge drinking, defined as having a substantial amount of drinking on one occasion, may increase risk of cancers as well as cardiovascular disease (CVD) (Malyutina et al., 2002; Mokdad et al., 2007; Morch et al., 2007) Our previous study also reported that heavy binge drinkers had higher hazard ratio of death for CVD mortality compared with non-drinkers (Sull et al., 2009). However, there have been few attempts as yet at cohort studies of the association