Cancer Death Rate Has Dropped Again
Cancer Death Charge per unit in U.Southward. Sees Sharpest One-Yr Drop
Breakthrough treatments for lung cancer and melanoma have driven down cancer mortality overall — and from 2016 to 2017 spurred the largest-ever reject.
The cancer death rate in the United States fell 2.2 percentage from 2016 to 2017 — the largest unmarried-twelvemonth turn down in cancer mortality e'er reported, the American Cancer Society reported on Wednesday. Since 1991 the rate has dropped 29 per centum, which translates to approximately 2.9 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred if the bloodshed charge per unit had remained constant.
"Every twelvemonth that nosotros see a decline in cancer mortality rate, it's very good news," said Rebecca Siegel, director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the organization'south written report, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Experts attributed the decline to the reduced smoking rates and to advances in lung cancer handling. New therapies for melanoma of the skin have also helped extend life for many people with metastatic disease, or cancer that has spread to other parts of the body.
Progress has slowed for colorectal, breast and prostate cancers, however.
The rising rate of obesity among Americans, as well as significant racial and geographic disparities, likely explain why the turn down in breast and colorectal cancer decease rates has begun to taper off, and why the decrease in rates of prostate cancer has halted entirely.
Cancer remains the 2d leading cause of decease after heart disease in both men and women nationally. The American Cancer Order predicts that in 2020 at that place will be about one,806,590 new cancer cases and 606,520 cancer deaths. Lung cancer kills more than people than breast, prostate, colorectal and brain cancers combined.
"We are still dealing with the furnishings of cigarette smoking from the 1960s and 70s in today's population," said Dr. Otis Brawley, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins University and former chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Social club. Because there is a lag betwixt exposure and cancer diagnosis, people who stopped smoking may develop lung cancer years later. Simply these rates should continue to go downwards, Dr. Brawley said.
In the last decade, several important advances in diagnosing and treating lung cancer have also helped avoid patient deaths. New imaging technologies have immune doctors to accurately appraise the stage of the cancer and its prognosis. Less invasive surgical approaches accept sped upward recovery times. And since 2015, immunotherapy has helped some patients by enlisting their T cells to kill their tumors.
Like treatment breakthroughs take completely reversed trends in melanoma. In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration approved ii new therapies, ipilimumab and vemurafenib, for metastatic melanoma. Subsequently, the melanoma mortality rate began declining by seven per centum per yr among men and women aged 20 to 64, and by 5 to 6 percent per year in individuals 65 and older.
"That was the largest reject in cancer mortality that we saw," Ms. Siegel said. "And what made it and so dramatic is that for people 65 and older, melanoma mortality rates were actually increasing in the 2000s."
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But as more Americans put on excess pounds, the rate of obesity-related cancers is increasing. These include malignancies of the liver, kidneys, pancreas and uterus, cancers of the breast in postmenopausal women, and colon and rectal cancers in adults younger than 55.
"What we're seeing with obesity is actually sort of parallel to what we saw with cigarette smoking," said Timothy Rebbeck, an epidemiologist at Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Studies have constitute that obesity, unhealthy diets and a lack of physical action are associated with metabolic and hormone abnormalities and with chronic inflammation, which may help explain the link to cancer. Controlling these factors could assist spring-start declines in cancer incidence and mortality rates in one case again, Dr. Rebbeck said.
But non all populations do good from prevention and advances in cancer treatment. Although racial disparities in cancer care are narrowing, the American Cancer Social club report found that black men were still twice equally likely to die of cancer as Asian/Pacific Islander men and 20 pct more than likely to die than white men.
Men and women living in sure states are also more probable to develop and succumb to potentially preventable cancers, such equally lung cancer, cervical cancer and melanoma. The reason lies in historical differences in smoking prevalence, obesity, other cancer chance factors and the power to admission and beget quality cancer intendance, Ms. Siegel said.
The incidence of cervical cancer is much higher in Arkansas than in Vermont or New Hampshire. Every bit some states adopt vaccinations against human papillomavirus more than widely than others, the difference in rates of HPV-linked cervical cancers could become more pronounced.
"Ensuring equal admission to known cancer prevention and early on detection methods would go far to accelerate the progress confronting overall cancer," Ms. Siegel said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/cancer-deaths-decline.html
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