U.S. cancer deaths drop by one-third

The cancer death rate in the U.S. continues to decline and dropped 33 percent from 1991 to 2019, saving an estimated 3.8 million lives during that time, the American Cancer Society said Thursday.

In the U.S., cancer has been the second-leading cause of death after heart disease. In 2020, more than 600,000 Americans died of cancer.

However, fewer people now are dying of cancer. The Cancer Society's annual statistics report shows that the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined has increased from 49 percent in the mid-1970s to 68 percent from 2012 through 2018.

The current survival rate is highest for cancer of the thyroid (98 percent), prostate (97 percent), testes (95 percent) and for melanoma (94 percent), and lowest for cancer of the pancreas (12 percent).

The study indicated that over the course of a lifetime, men have a 40 percent probability of developing some type of invasive cancer. Women fare slightly better, with a 39 percent probability.

The most dramatic reduction of cancer incidence is cervical cancer among young women. The analysis found that among women aged 20-24, the incidence of invasive cervical cancer declined by 11.4 percent annually from 2012 through 2019, with an overall reduction of 65 percent.

Researchers pointed out that it is the result of the vaccine against the two strains of HPV that cause 70 percent of all cervical cancers. It was approved in 2006 for females ages 9-26. The first group of vaccinated adolescents are now in their 20s.

This "totally follows the time when HPV vaccines were put into use", Dr William Dahut, the society's chief scientific officer, told CNN. "There are other cancers that are HPV-related — whether that's head and neck cancers or anal cancers – so there's optimism this will have importance beyond this," he said.

For both genders across age groups, lung and bronchus cancers are No 1 in incidents and cause of cancer death; colon and rectal cancer ranked third in both incidence and cause of cancer death.

For women, the second most prominent cancer type is breast cancer, which is also the second-leading cause of cancer death among women. Incidents of breast cancer are on a slight uptick trajectory, up by 0.5 percent every year since mid-2000. Researchers contributed the uptrend "at least in part to continued declines in the fertility rate and increases in excess body weight".

For men, the second-largest cancer type is prostate, which is also the No 2 cause of cancer death for men. Prostate cancer incidence also has been on an upward trend, rising 3 percent per year between 2014-19. That translated to 99,000 more cases.

"Unfortunately, prostate cancer remains the number one most frequently diagnosed malignancy amongst men in this country, with almost 290,000 men expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year," Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society, told CNN.

The study also found some racial disparities among cancer patients. Overall cancer incidence is highest among white people, followed closely by Native Americans and black people.

However, sex-specific incidence is highest in black men, whose rates during 2015 through 2019 were 79 percent higher than those in AAPI men and 5 percent higher than those in white men. High cancer incidence in black men is largely due to prostate cancer.

While white women have the highest incidence with cancer rates 10 percent higher than black women, black women have the highest cancer mortality rate.