ACS Issues Annual Report on Cancer Stats: Some Key Findings, and Notes on Survivorship
This week the ACS released its annual report on Cancer Facts and Figures in the U.S. The journal Cancer analyzes and considers the data in a helpful article. Some of the key and mainly positive findings have been covered elsewhere:
Between 1990 and 2008, death rates from cancer in the U.S. declined rather steadily, overall, by 22.9% in men and 15.3% in women. More recently, between 2004 and 2008, the incidence of cancer has declined slightly in men (0.6% per year) but it’s been stable in women. During this most recent period for which complete data are available, the overall death rates continued to drop – by 1.8% in men and by 1.6% per year in women.
This is generally good news. Still, the total number of people in the U.S. who will receive a new cancer diagnosis in 2012 is estimated at 1,638,910. Some 577,190 people will die of a malignancy, which approximates to 1,500 cancer deaths per day in the U.S. Cancer is second only to heart disease as the cause of death in North America. Most cancers, some 77%, arise in people aged 55 or older; conversely, approximately 23% arise in people under 55 years of age. The NIH estimates that in 2007, direct health expenditures for cancer in the U.S. totaled $103.8 billion.
Some notes on survivorship:
The latest estimate is that 12 million people are alive in the U.S. after a cancer diagnosis. This number includes people who are undergoing treatment and many who are in remission. Another encouraging detail: from 1975-77, the overall 5-year survival was just 49%. Now, between 2001 and 2007, overall 5-year survival stands at 67%. In other words, in 1975, just over half of cancer patients died within 5 years of their diagnosis; by 2007, two thirds of cancer patients were alive at 5 years.
The report includes a critical section on a few kinds of cancers for which the rates are increasing. These include cancer in the oropharynx (mouth and throat) associated with human papillomavirus (HPV); esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma type), melanoma and tumors of the pancreas, liver, bile duct, thyroid, and some kinds of kidney cancer. The Cancer journal has a separate article on these.
The full and detailed document, at 68 printed pages, deserves close review in many particulars. Next week I’ll go over the new data for breast cancer.
All for now,
ES
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This was really good news to see the cancer death rate decline in double digits. This has to be from new medications and treatments available to patients as well as cancer screenings.
Why doesn’t this stuff get reported more? Everything in the news today is just politics and celebrities. I do think that we’re going to get some kind of overall cure sooner then later. If only we could really put our resources behind it. Its also surprising that we only spend about $100 billlion on cancer a year, given the number of people that get it and how much treatment costs.