CNN
—
According to a new report from the American Cancer Society, the cancer death rate in the United States has steadily declined over the past three decades.
The U.S. cancer death rate has dropped 33% since 1991, equivalent to about 3.8 million deaths averted, according to the report published Thursday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The rate of lives lost to cancer continued to decline by 1.5% in the most recent year for which data is available, between 2019 and 2020.
The 33% drop in cancer mortality is “really amazing,” said Karen Knudsen, chief executive of the American Cancer Society.
The report attributes this steady progress to improvements in cancer treatment, lower smoking and increased early detection.
“New insights for prevention, early detection and treatment have led to real and significant gains in many of the 200 diseases we call cancer,” Knudsen said.
In their report, researchers from the American Cancer Society also indicated that HPV vaccinations were linked to reduced cancer deaths. HPV, or human papillomavirus, infections can cause cervical cancer and other types of cancer, and vaccination has been associated with fewer new cases of cervical cancer.
Among women in their early 20s, there was a 65% drop in cervical cancer rates from 2012 to 2019, “which totally follows when HPV vaccines were first introduced. service,” said Dr. William Dahut, the company’s Chief Scientific Officer.
“There are other cancers linked to HPV – whether it’s head and neck cancers or anal cancers – so there’s optimism it will have significance beyond that,” he said. -he declares.
The lifetime probability of being diagnosed with invasive cancer is estimated at 40.9% for men and 39.1% for women in the United States, according to the new report.
The report also includes projections for 2023, estimating that there could be nearly 2 million new cancer cases – the equivalent of around 5,000 cases per day – and more than 600,000 cancer deaths in the United States. This year.
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many people skipped regular medical checkups, and some doctors saw an increase in cases of advanced cancer as a result of screenings and treatments delayed by the pandemic.
The American Cancer Society researchers were unable to track “this reduction in screening that we all know we’ve seen across the country during the pandemic,” Knudsen said. “This time next year, I believe our report will provide a first insight into the impact of the pandemic on cancer incidence and cancer mortality.”
The new report includes data from national programs and registries, including those of the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.
Data showed that the cancer death rate in the United States rose for most of the 20th century, largely due to an increase in smoking-related lung cancer deaths. Then, as smoking rates fell and improvements in the early detection and treatment of some cancers increased, the cancer death rate fell from its peak in 1991.
Since then, the pace of decline has slowly accelerated.
The new report found that the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined increased from 49% for diagnoses in the mid-1970s to 68% for diagnoses from 2012 to 2018.
The types of cancer that now have the highest survival rates are thyroid at 98%, prostate at 97%, testicular at 95% and melanoma at 94%, according to the report.
Current survival rates are lowest for pancreatic cancers, at 12%.
The finding of a falling cancer death rate shows “continuation of good news,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the research.
“The main reason for the decline that began in 1991 is that the prevalence of smoking in the United States began to decline in 1965,” said Brawley, former chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.
“That’s why we started having a decline in 1991, and that decline continued because the prevalence of smoking in the United States continued to decline,” he said. “Now in some diseases our ability to treat has improved, and some people don’t die from the treatment.”
Although the cancer death rate is steadily falling, the new report also highlights that new cases of breast, uterine and prostate cancer are “concerning” and increasing in the United States.
Breast cancer incidence rates among women have increased by about 0.5% per year since the mid-2000s, according to the report.
The incidence of cancer of the uterine corpus has increased by about 1% per year since the mid-2000s in women aged 50 and over and by almost 2% per year since at least the mid-1990s in women younger.
The prostate cancer incidence rate increased by 3% per year from 2014 to 2019, after two decades of decline.
Knudsen called prostate cancer an “outlier” since the previous decline in its incidence has reversed, appearing to be driven by diagnoses of advanced disease.
On Thursday, the American Cancer Society announced the launch of the Impact initiative, aimed at improving prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates by funding new research programs and expanding patient support, among other things. efforts.
“Unfortunately, prostate cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed malignancy in men in this country, with nearly 290,000 men expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year,” Knudsen said. Cancer diagnosed when confined to the prostate has a five-year survival rate of “over 99%”, she said, but for metastatic prostate cancer there is no lasting remedy.
“Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for men in this country,” she said. “What we are reporting is not just an increase in the incidence of prostate cancer across all demographic groups, but a 5% year-over-year increase in the diagnosis of men with prostate cancer. more advanced disease. So we don’t catch these cancers early when we have the ability to cure men of prostate cancer.
Breast, uterine, and prostate cancers also show great racial disparity, in which communities of color have higher mortality rates and lower survival rates.
In 2020, the overall risk of death from cancer was 12% higher among black people than white people, according to the new report.
“Not all individuals or families are affected equally,” Knudsen said.
For example, “Black men unfortunately have a 70% increase in prostate cancer incidence compared to white men and a two- to four-fold increase in prostate cancer mortality compared to any other group. ethnically and racially in the United States,” she said. said.
Data from the new report demonstrate “significant and consistent” advances against cancer, said Dr. Ernest Hawk, vice president of cancer prevention and population sciences at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, in an email.
“Cancer is preventable in many cases and detectable at an early stage with better outcomes in many other cases. When necessary, treatments improve both in their effectiveness and in their safety. This is all good news,” Hawk wrote.
“However, it is high time for us to take health inequities seriously and make it a much bigger national priority. Inequalities in cancer risk, cancer care and cancer outcomes are intolerable, and we must not settle for these regular reminders of avoidable inequalities,” he said. “With deliberate and dedicated efforts, I believe we can eliminate these disparities and make even greater strides towards ending cancer.”