US cancer deaths drop 25% since ‘91
WASHINGTON: The cancer death rate in the United States has dropped 25 percent from a peak in 1991, mainly due to a steady decline in smoking and advances in early detection and treatment of tumors, new research released Thursday shows. The rate decrease means there were about 2.1 million fewer deaths between 1991 and 2014, according to an annual report by the American Cancer Society (ACS). “The continuing drops in the cancer death rate are a powerful sign of the potential we have to reduce cancer’s deadly toll,” ACS chief medical officer Otis Brawley said.
The decreasing death rates were most pronounced for patients suffering from four major types of cancer - lung, breast, prostate and colorectal. Lung cancer deaths among men plummeted by 43 percent between 1990 and 2014, and by 17 percent among women between 2002 and 2014, according to the research published in CA: A Journal for Clinicians. The breast cancer mortality rate for women decreased by 38 percent between 1989 and 2014.
The drop is even more dramatic among men suffering from prostate cancer - 51 percent between 1993 and 2014 - and in colon cancer deaths among both sexes, which plunged 51 percent between 1976 and 2014. Some 1.68 million new cases of cancer will emerge in the United States this year, the report predicts, along with 600,000 deaths from the disease. Cancer remains the second most prominent cause of death in the country, behind cardiovascular ailments.
Gender disparities
Over the past decade, the incidence of cancer has remained stable among women and declined among men by almost two percent a year. The mortality rate from the disease has dropped by around 1.5 percent annually among both sexes. But the report finds significant disparities in incidence and mortality between genders. In all forms, the frequency of cancer is 20 percent greater among men and the mortality rate 40 percent higher. That difference is mainly due to the risk factors affecting each sex. Liver cancer, an extremely fatal form of the disease, is three times more common in men than women. — AFP