New Report Finds Survival Rates Are Improving Every Year For Most of the Common Cancers in U.S.

Overall cancer death rates continue to decline in men and women for all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, according to the latest Annual Report to the Nation.

During 2001 to 2018, the decline in death rates from lung cancer and melanoma decreased significantly, with a substantial increase in survival rates for metastatic melanoma.

The report, which appears in JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, covers the period before the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects good news for 11 of the 19 most common cancers in men and for 14 of the 20 most common cancers. Between the men. women.

“The decline in death rates from lung cancer and melanoma is the result of progress across the cancer continuum, from reducing smoking rates to preventing cancer to discoveries such as targeted drug therapies and point inhibitors. immune monitoring, ”said Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, Ph .D., executive director of the American Cancer Society, who celebrated the progress.

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An analysis of long-term trends in cancer death rates in this year’s report also shows that death rates improved in both men and women between 2001 and 2018. In men, a decrease of 1.8% per year in 2001-2015 it improved to 2.3% annually during 2015-2018. In women, cancer rates decreased by 1.4% per year between 2001 and 2015 and decreased further in 2015-2018 at a rate of 2.1%. The report found that overall cancer death rates also decreased across all racial and ethnic groups during 2014-2018.

“The continued decline in cancer death rates should be gratifying to the cancer research community, as it is proof that scientific advances over several decades are making a real difference in outcomes at the population level,” said Norman Sharpless, MD, director of the National Cancer Institute. , part of the National Institutes of Health.

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The authors also reported that cancer death rates continued to decline among children under the age of 15 and also in young adults ages 15 to 39, despite an increase in incidence rates from 2001 to 2017.

Another positive finding was found among liver cancer incidence rates, which were previously increasing but have stabilized in both men and women.

“I think we could make even more improvements by tackling obesity, which has the potential to overtake tobacco use to become the leading modifiable factor associated with cancer,” Sharpless added.

The annual report it is a collaborative effort between the American Cancer Society (ACS); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health; and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).

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