A new report released by the American Cancer Society on Tuesday offers good news: Americans who had cancer in 2018 are less likely to die from it than a year earlier and have continued a steady decline in cancer deaths over the past thirty years . However hopeful this trend may be, there are still lower survival rates in different parts of the country and among black Americans. Experts are also concerned that the covid-19 pandemic will eventually wipe out this progress.
The report is the newest in a long annual series presented by the American Cancer Society. It relies on data collected by the federal government and states, including information from diagnosed cancer cases. These data are then used by the authors to estimate next year’s cancer diagnosis and deaths. It takes time to gather and fully analyze, and therefore the most recent report only covers 2018.
The number of total deaths from cancer in the US is usually declining annually due to the growing population. But the chance of someone dying because of their cancer – the cancer mortality rate, in other words – dropped again in 2018. Compared to 2017, cancer deaths shrank by 2.4% in 2018, the second consecutive year that saw a record drop in mortality. Since 1991, the overall death rate from cancer has decreased by 31%, accounting for about 3 million deaths that occurred during that time.
According to the authors, there are several reasons for this continued decline. For example, over the past three decades, Americans have been smoking less and being screened for cancer earlier. Improvements in treatment have also helped, especially in recent years for a form of lung cancer known as non-small cell lung cancer. Although lung cancer remains the most common cause of death, these improvements have reduced more deaths from lung cancer over the past five years.
Despite the successes, there are still underlying differences in cancer care. The death rate in some states is much higher than others, such as Mississippi and much of the Southeast, which probably reflects the lack of access to health care that many residents suffer. And while the gap in cancer care between black and white Americans has narrowed over time, it still exists. For example, the average five-year survival rate of cancer among white Americans between 2010 and 2016 was 68%, compared to 63% for black Americans. Thousands of women also die each year from cervical cancer, which is now almost completely preventable through screening and the HPV vaccine. Yet the vaccination rate (about 50%) among teenagers is still far below the almost universal doses seen in other countries.
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“Although recent advances in the treatment of lung cancer and several other cancers have reason to celebrate, it is worrying to see the continuing racial, socio-economic and geographical differences for highly preventable cancers,” said William Cance, chief medical and scientific researcher. officer of the American cancer. Society, said in a statement released with the report.
The report estimates that nearly 1.9 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year and that 608,570 Americans will eventually die from them. However, this estimate does not take into account the covid-19 pandemic, which started in late 2019 and continues throughout the country and the world. Studies and experts have warned that Americans’ access to cancer care has been affected by the pandemic, by reducing or even reducing the prevalence delayed treatment. This affects not only the cancer deaths in 2020, but also the next few years.
“We anticipate that disruptions in access to cancer care in 2020 will lead to an increase in downstream diagnoses that could hamper progress in reducing cancer mortality rates in the coming years,” lead author Rebecca Siegel said in the ACP statement.