Breast cancer is the leading cancer among women in the Western world. In Norway, 2,503
cases of female breast cancer were diagnosed in 2000, which corresponds to an age-adjusted
incidence rate of 72.1 per 100,000 women per year (1). The risk of breast cancer increases
with age from puberty, doubling about every 10 years until the menopause, when the rate of
increase slows dramatically and a flattening of the age-specific incidence curve is observed in
some populations (1). In general, breast cancer spreads to distant organs and progresses to
fatal disease more rapidly the younger the woman is at the time of diagnosis (2). This has
made breast cancer the leading cause of death among Norwegian women aged 35-55 years in
2001 (3). Endometrial cancer is the most common type of malignant tumour in the uterine
corpus. In Norway, 554 cases of corpus uteri cancer were diagnosed in 2000, which
corresponds to an age-adjusted incidence rate of 14.6 per 100,000 women per year (1). In
contrast to breast cancer, endometrial cancer is entirely a disease of middle-aged and elderly
women
