Number of cancer deaths drops 33% in the US since 1991

The rate of people dying from cancer in the United States has steadily declined over the past three decades, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society.

Compared to 1991, the death rate dropped by 33% in that country. The value is equivalent to an estimated 3.8 million deaths prevented, informs the document, published Thursday (12) in the scientific journal “CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians”. Between 2019 and 2020, the reduction in deaths was 1.5%.

The 33% decline in cancer mortality is “absolutely stunning,” said Karen Knudsen, executive director of the American Cancer Society.

According to the study, the constant progress is due to factors such as improvements in cancer treatment, the drop in smoking and the increase in early detection.

“New insights into prevention, early detection and treatment have resulted in real and significant gains in many of the 200 diseases we call cancer,” said Knudsen.

Society researchers also pointed to HPV vaccination as another cause of the reduction in cancer deaths. Infections with HPV, or human papillomavirus, can cause some types of cancer, such as cervical cancer – and vaccination is associated with a decrease in cases.

Among women in their early 20s, there was a 65% drop in cervical cancer rates from 2012 to 2019, “which tracks with the time that HPV vaccines have become available,” reported William Dahut, director scientific society.

“There are other types of cancer related to HPV, such as head and neck and anal cancer, which shows the importance of vaccination”, he added.

The probability of a lifetime diagnosis of invasive cancer is estimated to be 40.9% for men and 39.1% for women in the US, according to the new report.

The report also includes projections for 2023, estimating that there could be nearly 2 million new cases of cancer — equivalent to about 5,000 cases a day — and more than 600,000 cancer deaths in the US.

During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many people skipped routine tests, some doctors reported an increase in cases of advanced cancer by the time tests were resumed.

Medical society researchers were unable to track “the reduction in screening that we’ve all seen across the country during the pandemic,” confirmed Knudsen. “I believe that next year, our report will give an early look at the size of the pandemic’s impact on cancer incidence and mortality.”

more good news

The report includes data from national programs and registries, such as data from the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

The data showed that the US cancer death rate increased during most of the 20th century, largely due to the increase in deaths from lung tumors related to smoking. With falling smoking rates and increasing early detection and treatments for some cancers, there has been a decline in the cancer death rate 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, which was 49% for diagnoses in the mid-1970s, increased to 68% for diagnoses during the period 2012 to 2018.

The types of cancer that now have the highest survival rates are thyroid (98%), prostate (97%), testes (95%) and melanoma (94%), according to the report.

The current lowest survival rate is for pancreatic cancer, at 12%.

The finding of a reduction in the cancer death rate is part of a string of good news, noted Otis Brawley, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the research.

“The biggest reason for the decline that began in 1991 was the decline in smoking in the United States since 1965,” explained Brawley, former medical director of the American Cancer Society. Since then, “the decline has continued because the prevalence of smoking in the United States has continued to decline,” he said. “Our ability to treat certain diseases has improved, and lives are being saved because of treatment.”

Increase of some types

While the death rate from cancer has followed a steady decline, the new report also highlights that breast, uterine and prostate cancers are bucking this trend and are on the rise. Breast cancer incidence rates in women have increased by about 0.5% per year since the mid-2000s, according to the report.

The incidence of cervical cancer has increased by about 1% per year since the mid-2000s among women over age 50 and by nearly 2% per year since the mid-1990s in younger women.

The prostate cancer incidence rate increased by 3% per year from 2014 to 2019, after two decades of decline.

Knudsen called prostate cancer “a point off the curve” as its earlier decline in 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 lowering prostate cancer incidence and death rates, funding new research programs and expanding patient support, among other efforts. .

“Unfortunately, prostate cancer remains the number one most frequently diagnosed malignancy among men in this country, with nearly 290,000 cases expected to be diagnosed this year,” said Karen Knudsen of the American Cancer Society. Diagnosed when it is confined to the prostate, this type of cancer has a five-year survival rate of “more than 99%”. But, but for metastatic prostate cancer, there is no durable cure.

“Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for men in this country,” commented the doctor. “What we are reporting is not just an increase in the incidence of prostate cancer across all demographics, but a 5% year-over-year increase in the diagnosis of men with more advanced disease. So we’re not catching these tumors early, when we have the opportunity to cure them.”

Health inequalities

Breast, uterine, and prostate cancers also have a large racial disparity, in which non-white communities have higher death rates and lower survival rates.

In 2020, the risk of global cancer death was 12% higher in blacks compared to whites, according to the new report.

“Not every individual or every family is affected equally,” said the director of the society.

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 mortality from prostate cancer related to any other ethnic group in the United States. United,” he detailed.

Data from the new report demonstrate “important and consistent” advances against cancer, said Ernest Hawk, vice president of cancer prevention and population sciences at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

“Cancer is preventable in many cases and detectable at an early stage with better outcomes in many others. When needed, treatments are improving in both their effectiveness and safety. This is great news,” she wrote.

“However, we should have taken health inequalities seriously by now and made them a much higher national priority. The inequalities in tumor risk, disease care and outcomes are intolerable, and we should not be complacent about this situation,” continued Hawk. “With deliberate and dedicated effort, I believe we can eliminate these disparities and make even greater strides towards ending cancer.”

The position of the White House

The new report shows “great progress,” White House Cancer Moonshot coordinator Danielle Carnival said in a statement released Thursday. The “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, relaunched by President Biden last year, commits the nation to working to reduce the cancer death rate by at least 50% over the next 25 years.

“The report shows great progress has been made in reducing smoking rates, improving early detection and providing better treatments for many types of cancer. This means that millions of American families have been spared the immeasurable loss of a loved one,” said Carnival.

“The report also underscores that there is more work to be done to save more lives,” he continued. “President Biden’s vision is to bolster the fight against cancer by developing new ways to prevent, detect and treat cancer – thereby ensuring that the tools we have and those we develop along the way reach all of our North Americans. -Americans”.