A new report released Tuesday by the American Cancer Society offers some good news: Americans who had cancer in 2018 were less likely to die because of it than they were a year earlier, continuing a steady decline in cancer mortality in the last 30 years. As hopeful as this trend may be, there are still lower survival rates in different parts of the country and among black Americans. Experts also worry that the covid-19 pandemic will eventually wipe out some of this progress.
The report is the most recent in a long-running annual series by the American Cancer Society. It is based on data collected by the federal and state governments, including information on diagnosed cancers. These data are then used by the authors to estimate the diagnosis of cancer and deaths next year. These data need time to be fully collected and analyzed, which is why the latest report only covers 2018.
The total number of cancer deaths in the US tends to increase slightly each year due to the growing population. But the chances of someone dying because of them cancer – the cancer mortality rate, in other words – fell again in 2018. Compared to 2017, cancer mortality fell by 2.4% in 2018, the second consecutive year that recorded a record decrease in mortality. Since 1991, the overall cancer mortality rate has dropped by 31%, representing about 3 million preventable deaths at that time.
There are several reasons for this continuing decline, according to the authors. In the last three decades, for example, Americans have smoked less and been diagnosed earlier with cancer. Improvements in treatment have also helped, especially in recent years for a form of lung cancer known as small cell lung cancer. Although lung cancer remains the most common cause of death, these improvements have contributed to lower lung cancer mortality more than any other cancer in the last five years.
Despite the successes, however, there are still basic disparities in cancer care. The mortality rate in some states is much higher than in others, such as Mississippi and much of the southeast, probably reflecting the lack of access to health care suffered by many residents. And while the gap in cancer care among black-and-white Americans has narrowed over time, it still exists. The average five-year cancer survival rate among white Americans between 2010 and 2016 was 68%, for example, compared to 63% for black Americans. Thousands of women also die each year from cervical cancer, which is almost entirely preventable through screening and the HPV vaccine – yet vaccination rates (around 50%) among adolescents are still well below the almost universal rates seen in other countries.
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“While recent advances in the treatment of lung cancer and other cancers are a cause for celebration, it is worrying to see persistent racial, socio-economic and geographical disparities in highly preventable cancers,” said William Cance, chief medical and scientific officer of American Cancer Society, said in a statement released with the report.
The report estimates that nearly 1.9 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year and that 608,570 Americans will eventually die because of it. However, this estimate does not take into account the covid-19 pandemic, which began in late 2019 and continues to grow throughout the country and the world. studied and experts warned that Americans’ access to cancer care has been affected by the pandemic, through reduced screenings or even treatment delay. This may not only affect the cancer mortality rate in 2020, but also in the next few years.
“We anticipate that disruptions in access to cancer care in 2020 will lead to increases downstream in advanced diagnoses that could impede progress in reducing cancer mortality rates in the coming years,” said lead author Rebecca Siegel in the ACS statement.