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According to a new study from the American Cancer Society Cancer published Thursday, cancer deaths in the United States have decreased by 33% over the past three decades.
As a result, there have been about 3.8 million fewer deaths from cancer.
Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, called the 33% decline in cancer mortality truly formidable. In addition, she noted, the rate of lives lost to cancer between 2019 and 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, shrunk by 1.5%.
In 2020, cancer was the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease. COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death, increasing the death rate by almost 1% from 2020, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
The American Cancer Society study attributes the steady decline in the mortality rate from cancer – after peaking in 1991 – to a decrease in smoking, improved cancer detection, and cancer treatment. Knudsen noted all this has resulted in true, meaningful gains in many of the 200 diseases that we call cancer.
About 2.6 million deaths were averted among men, two times more than among women with about 1.2 million. According to the study, this is a result of the higher peak and faster decline in the death rate among men, who still have a higher mortality rate from cancer than women.
The study points out the drop in lung cancer as a driver of this trend. However, lung cancer remains among the most deadly cancers with the highest death rate for both men and women.
The American Cancer Society researchers also point out that HPV vaccinations have reduced cancer deaths since they’ve been linked with a decrease in new cervical cancer cases and other cancer types caused by HPV, or human papillomavirus.
Per Dr. William Dahut, the American Cancer Society’s chief scientific officer, there was a 65% drop in cervical cancer rates among women in their early 20s from 2012 through 2019, which tracks with the time HPV vaccines were deployed.
“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 told CNN.
Projections for 2023
The report includes projections for 2023: 609,820 cancer deaths in the United States this year – 1670 per day – with nearly 2 million new cancer cases, “the equivalent of about 5370 cases each day.”
“In addition, there will be about 55,720 new cases of ductal carcinoma in situ in women and 89,070 new cases of melanoma in situ of the skin,” the report says.
Furthermore, the lifetime probability of being diagnosed with any invasive cancer is estimated to be 40.9% for men and 39.1% for women in the U.S.
“Higher risk in men for most cancer types is thought to largely reflect greater exposure to carcinogenic environmental and behavioral factors, such as smoking,” the study says, pointing to a recent study that suggests additional factorsd such as “height, endogenous hormone exposure, and immune function and response.”
