The SLORA web portal provides publicly available data on the cancer burden in Slovenia. You can prepare this data for the entire country or by region, sex, cancer type, and selected time period. To help you navigate the SLORA web portal, we have prepared user instructions and a glossary.

Pre-prepared visualisations and analyses are available for the common cancers. You can find them in the Selected Cancers in Figures section, as well as in annual reports and other publications.

The Slovenian Cancer Registry provides high-quality, comprehensive data on all Slovenian cancer patients in accordance with international standards. Due to the complexity of data collection and verification, the data are available with a certain time lag relative to the year of diagnosis, which is consistent with international practice. 

To provide more up-to-date insights, the Slovenian Cancer Registry prepares estimates of new cancer cases based on analyses of recent trends – these projections of new cancer cases for the current year are also available on the SLORA web portal.

The data is reported by the official source of cancer data – the Slovenian Cancer Registry, which systematically collects and processes data on all cancer patients in Slovenia. The Registry operates in accordance with international standards, so the data is of high quality and comparable with that of other countries.

The number of new cancer cases is increasing over time, primarily due to the ageing population. Cancer is more common among older adults, and the proportion of older adults in Slovenia is steadily increasing. This rise is also influenced by improved diagnostics and screening programmes, which enable the detection of more cancer cases, often at earlier stages. The increase is partly due to the greater prevalence of cancer risk factors, such as tobacco smoking, obesity, and exposure to chemicals in the workplace.

The main indicators used to describe the burden of cancer are:

• incidence refers to the number of newly diagnosed cancer cases.

• mortality refers to the number of deaths due to cancer.

• prevalence refers to the number of living individuals who have ever had cancer.

• survival estimates the proportion of patients who are still alive at a specific time after diagnosis.

More detailed explanations are available in the glossary.

Minor fluctuations from year to year are common, especially for rarer cancers or smaller populations (for example, a smaller geographic area or specific age groups), and are often due to chance. For this reason, we often present data combined over five or ten years. In addition, we statistically estimate a trend, which shows whether there are significant differences in the incidence of a particular type of cancer over a longer period, such as ten years.

The data on the SLORA web portal show how many people develop or die from cancer in specific areas, but not the causes for developing a cancer. We should not draw conclusions about possible causal links to cancer based solely on data on cancer incidence in a given area and data on pollution in that area. Targeted research examines potential links between risk factors (such as exposure to pollutants) and potential health effects, and simply comparing the number of cases is not sufficient.

In smaller areas, such as municipalities, or settlements, the number of cancer cases may be very small, which can lead to unreliable results and the risk of identifying individuals. Therefore, we present the data at a level that allows for reliable and secure interpretation – administrative units and statistical regions. A specific epidemiological study is required to conduct a detailed analysis of cancer incidence in smaller geographic areas.

Yes, you may use the data for research, professional, or journalistic purposes. We only ask that you properly cite the source; guidance on how to cite the SLORA web portal can be found here. For further clarification or information not available on SLORA, please contact the Slovenian Cancer Registry (register@onko-i.si).