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In the more developed countries the total number of new cases with a hematological tumour was 415,433 for all ages, whilst 188,654 occurred in people aged 70 or more years, representing the 45 % of total cases, equally divided into two sexes. The most these malignancies is closely linked to age and incidence rates increased exponentially after 50 years of age. Aetiology of hematological tumours is largely unknown. However the basic causal mechanism could be a decline in adaptive immunity, strongly related with individual age. In addition to such immunodeficiency, some specific risk factors have been found: viral infections, overweight and obesity (particularly for non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas - NHL), ionising radiation and chemical compounds (particularly for leukemia). Moreover, it must to be taken into account that mortality and survival, more specifically in the elderly, are influenced negatively by socio-economic deprivation. Considering geographical distribution, substantial variations in incidence and mortality across the world were observed. Incidence of younger and older adults was for all hematological malignancies higher in more developed countries. As regards mortality, younger people showed rates higher in developing countries, while the elderly in Western and developed areas. The epidemic growth of NHL incidence was not finished in the first decade of 2000, even if in Italian and US old populations the rates started leveling off. Unlike incidence, mortality was descending in the elderly. Leukemia incidence trends were very often stable or weakly growing, without any tendency to decrease, but for leukemia mortality it was possible to highlight an encouraging general picture with rates often decreasing. The elderly had always survival rates lower than those of middle aged adults. The prognostic disadvantage was larger at 1 than 5 years from diagnosis. The gap was smaller for NHL and acute myeloid leukemia, whereas the difference in survival was much larger for

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Little or no evidence exists on which criteria for follow-up for postsurgical treatment of hepatobiliary cancer may be based. Therefore, although these cancers are common, current guidelines seldom address this issue and only with generic recommendations. In addition to what was reported in the main chapter, the only guidelines generated in Europe and written in English on the treatment of hepatic and biliary tumors are those published by the British Society of Gastroenterology [1, 2]. However, these report no recommendation about posttreatment surveillance. On the other hand, the Associazione Italiana Studio Fegato (AISF—Italian Association for the Study of the Liver) has published guidelines written in Italian on the management of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) which include some recommendations about surveillance [3–5]. These recommendations, currently followed by most Italian institutions, including ours, are summarized here.