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Total cancer deaths down for first time in 70 years
Source: (cancerfacts.com)
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
BETHESDA – Feb. 8, 2006 – Cancer deaths in the U.S. fell in year-to-year numbers for the first time since the 1930s, according to the latest figures from the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society.
The total number of deaths due to cancer was 556,902 in 2003, down from 557,271 a year earlier according to the report Cancer Facts & Figures 2006, which compiles records from 2003 and 2002, the most recent data available.
While the cancer rate has been falling for the past several years, the total number of deaths continued to grow due to population growth, which has partially masked the progress that is being made, according to Dr. John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.
"For years we've proudly pointed to dropping cancer death rates even as a growing and aging population meant more actual deaths," Seffrin said in a report on the ACS web site. "Now, for the first time, the advances we've made in prevention, early detection, and treatment are outpacing even the population factors that in some ways obscured that success."
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) report summarizes our nation's progress against cancer in relation to the Healthy People 2010 targets developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This report, which is available online, was first issued in 2001 as the Cancer Progress Report, and has been released every other year. The revised and expanded report is intended for policy makers, researchers, clinicians, and public health service providers, offering updated national trends data and a variety of new features.
Overall, it shows steady progress in reducing deaths from the four most common cancers, lung, colorectal, breast and prostate, as well as for all cancers combined. People are also making progress in prevention, including substantial declines in the number of U.S. citizens who smoke since the peak in the 1960s. Also on the plus side, smoking among youth, which had been rising in the early 1990s, began to decline in 1997 and this reports shows that trend continuing.
On the negative side, while deaths from cancers are declining the number diagnosed with breast cancer in women and with prostate and testicle cancer in men, as well as leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, myeloma, melanoma of skin, and thyroid, kidney, and esophageal cancer in both men and women is rising.
Other areas of concern highlighted in the report include the rising rate of people who are overweight and obese, the continued rise in the cost of cancer treatment and the outcomes gap between blacks and other ethnic groups, which remains substantial.
The full report is available online on the NCI web site.
SOURCE: Cancer Trends Progress Report - 2005 Update, National Cancer Institute, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, MD, December 2005, http://progressreport.cancer.gov.
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