Cancer Outcomes Keep Improving

The US death rate from cancer has dropped 32% over the past three decades, according to the American Cancer Society’s annual report published last week. That translates to around 3.5 million prevented deaths.

🤔 What’s going on?... People are being diagnosed earlier and living longer due to better access to care, higher screening rates, and improved treatments. But the biggest change? We’re not smoking as much.

• The cancer death rate in the US mostly went up during the 20th century, largely due to the smoking epidemic. It peaked in 1991, with 215 out of every 100,000 people dying from cancer.
• Since then, the cancer death rate has steadily decreased. In 2019, about 146 out of every 100,000 people died from cancer.
• The fastest declines in history have actually happened over the last two years on record – from 2016 to 2017 (2.2%), and from 2017 to 2018 (2.4%).

✋ Yes, but... While lung cancer, the most common type of cancer overall, is decreasing, prostate cancer, the most common type of cancer among men, and breast cancer, the most common type of cancer among women, increased slightly. Cervical cancer also remains particularly problematic.

📝 Worth noting: 42% of cancers can potentially be prevented, according to the report.

• That includes 19% that are caused by smoking and 18% that are caused by drinking alcohol, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and obesity.

📸 The big picture: Even though the death rate keeps declining, cancer is still the second most common cause of death in the US. Only heart disease kills more people.

• This year, the American Cancer Society estimates nearly 2 million people will be newly diagnosed with cancer. More than 600,000 people are expected to die from the disease.
• The lifetime probability of being diagnosed with invasive cancer is ~40% for men and ~39% for women.

+Caveat: Cancer data lags, so the most recent numbers available are all from before the pandemic. Covid adversely affected diagnoses and treatment for cancer, according to the report.