US Cancer Deaths Have Dropped by 25 Percent Since 1991

Let's start 2017 with some good news: fewer people are dying from cancer.

The cancer death rate has been declining for the past two decades, and has dropped 25 percent in the United States since its peak in 1991, according to Cancer Statistics 2017, an annual report put out by the American Cancer Society and published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. That means there have been 2.1 million fewer deaths from cancer between 1991 and 2014.

According to the report, an estimated 1,688,780 people will be diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and 600,920 will pass away from it. While this may seem like a lot—and it still is—over the past decade, the cancer death rate has declined by 1.5 percent annually among both men and women. At its peak in 1991, the cancer death rate was 215.1, per 100,000 population, as compared with 161.2, per 100,000 population, in 2014.

"The drop in cancer mortality is primarily the result of large declines in the four major causes of cancer death (lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate), which account for almost half of all cancer deaths," Rebecca Siegel, strategic director of surveillance information services for the American Cancer Society, wrote in an email. The declines for these cancers and others are driven by drops in national smoking rates (42 percent in 1965 to 15 percent in 2015), which causes a third of all cancer deaths. Our collective improvements in early detection of cancer, screenings and advancements in cancer treatment account for the rest.

While the report was full of hopeful news, it also highlighted a significant disparity in gender in cancer incidence and mortality. The incidence of cancer is 20 percent higher in men, but the cancer death rate is 40 percent higher in men than in women.

A few factors might account for this gender disparity, including how often cancers are occur among men versus women. Liver cancer, for example, is more common in men, reflecting their more excessive drinking habits, smoking habits, and higher rates of Hepatitis C viral infections. Men are four times more likely to be affected by esophagus, larynx, and bladder cancers, while the incidence of melanoma is also 60 percent higher in men.

"Some good news," Siegel added, "is that the large disparity in cancer mortality between blacks and whites, which peaked in 1990 in men and in 1998 in women, has been slowly narrowing."

In 2014, the overall cancer death rate was 21 percent higher in black men than in white men, which is down from 47 percent higher in 1990. She said this decline was driven by black teens who have been smoking less every decade. And more people having access to health insurance through the now threatened Affordable Care Act.

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