The latest report on cancer statistics shows that in the last 20 years, cancer deaths in the US fell by 27%. There is a surprising reason behind this drop in mortality, but is cancer actually increasing or decreasing? Here’s what experts say.
The latest updates on cancer deaths in the United States
Among all Americans, there is roughly a 4 in 10 chance of being diagnosed with cancer. The probability of someone being diagnosed with any invasive cancer within their lifetime is estimated at 40.9% for men and 39.1% for women in the US, according to a new report by the American Cancer Society.
According to the latest cancer statistics from 2001 to 2020, cancer death rates in the United States decreased by 27%, dropping from 196.5 to 144.1 deaths per 100,000 population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported.
Along lines of biological sex, cancer death rates for males dropped 30%, to 170.3 deaths per 100,000 population, while cancer death rates for females dropped 25%, to 124.5 deaths per 100,000 population.
Death rate decreases even more going back 32 years
The rate of cancer deaths in the US has dropped by an even greater margin – 33% – going back to 1991, according to a new report in A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, published in early January.
Experts point to a number of factors that are making cancer less fatal than it ever has been before. These factors include early screening and detection, vaccines, and improvements in treatment, as well as a decrease in smoking, CNN reported.
HPV and cancer
Infections with HPV, or human papillomavirus, can cause a number of cancer types. The use of HPV vaccines appears to be playing a significant role in reducing many types, especially cervical cancer.
Among women in their early 20s, cervical cancer rates dropped by 65% from 2012 through 2019. This aligns with when HPV vaccines were first distributed and became more routine.
The role of behavioral changes in decreasing cancer deaths
The latest figures on a decrease in cancer mortality for men within the last 30 years are nearly entirely related to three types of cancer: Prostate, lung, and colon. At the same time, little progress has been made on other lethal cancers, according to the Atlantic.
As fewer people are smoking, since 1990, the rate of lung cancer has fallen by over 50 percent. At the same time, treatment for late-stage lung cancers has improved significantly in the past few decades, according to the American Cancer Society.
Since the early 1990s, the use of blood tests has led to the early detection of prostate-specific toxins and coincides with a decline in prostate cancer when these tests were utilized.
What the future holds for further decreasing cancer deaths
One of the most promising, if not game-changing, prospects for decreasing cancer deaths in the future is in the forthcoming blood tests that look for circulating-tumor DNA in order to detect 50 types of cancer, such as the Grail Galleri test. Once these become less expensive and widely available, they could revolutionize cancer detection and prevention.
