Report shows steady decline in cancer death rates

Graph credit ACS

CANCER DIGEST – Jan. 17, 2020 – The cancer death rate declined by 29 percent from 1991 to 2017, including a 2.2 percent drop from 2016 to 2017, the largest single-year drop in cancer mortality ever reported.

Overall cancer death rates dropped by an average of 1.5 percent per year during the most recent decade of data (2008-2017), continuing a trend that began in the early 1990s and resulting in the 29 percent drop in cancer mortality in that time. 

The results come from an analysis of cancer data and appear in Cancer Statistics, 2020, the latest edition of the American Cancer Society's annual report on cancer rates and trends. 

"The accelerated drops in lung cancer mortality as well as in melanoma that we're seeing are likely due at least in part to advances in cancer treatment over the past decade, such as immunotherapy," said William G. Cance, M.D., chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society. "They are a profound reminder of how rapidly this area of research is expanding, and now leading to real hope for cancer patients."

The steady 26-year decline in overall cancer mortality is driven by long-term drops in death rates for the four major cancers -- lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate, although recent trends are mixed.

The pace of mortality reductions was led by reductions in lung cancer death rates, which have dropped by 51 percent (since 1990) in men and by 26 percent (since 2002) in women, with the most rapid progress in recent years.

The most rapid declines in mortality occurred for melanoma of the skin, on the heels of breakthrough treatments approved in 2011 that pushed one-year survival for patients diagnosed with metastatic disease from 42 percent during 2008-2010 to 55 percent during 2013-2015. 

Read more ...

Source: American Cancer Society press release (edited for length)