Death rates from cancer have been dropping by an average of 2.1 percent a year recently in the United States, a near doubling of decreases that began in 1993, researchers report.
“Every 1 percent is 5,000 people who aren’t dying,” said Dr. Richard Schilsky, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “That’s a huge sense of progress at this point.”
Much of the progress comes not from miracle cures, but from improvements in prevention, early detection and treatment of some of the leading causes of cancer death — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate tumors.
Years of nagging and pleading by health officials are finally beginning to pay off, experts say, in smoking cessation and increased use of mammograms, colonoscopies and other screening tests for colorectal and prostate cancer.
But the new statistics also contain bad news: American Indians and Alaska Natives in some regions are not benefiting from the same improvements as the rest of the population, and have higher rates of preventable cancers and late-stage tumors.
About 1.8 million of the nation’s 3.3 million American Indians and Alaska Natives receive their medical care through the Indian Health Service, but its facilities generally do not treat cancer. Outside contractors provide cancer treatment; to get it patients may have to navigate complicated rules and restrictions.
The new information, in an annual report from the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and others, is being published online Monday and in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cancer.
In the United States, cancer remains the second leading cause of death after heart disease, with 559,650 deaths expected this year.
But death rates from cancer have been dropping by an average of 1.1 percent a year since 1993.
The report, using a statistical technique to analyze death rates, finds that the rate of decline deepened recently, averaging 2.1 percent a year from 2002 to 2004, the latest dates for which statistics are available.
“I’m hopeful that these improvements will serve to at least partially satisfy the cynics who have questioned whether the investment in cancer treatment has borne fruit,” said Dr. Neal Meropol, director of the gastrointestinal cancer program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “In my view these numbers are starting to highlight the advances that have been made.”
But Meropol added that the figures “also highlight how we are failing large segments of our population in not providing health insurance.”
The American Cancer Society has said that lack of access to medical care is a major obstacle to reducing death rates. It recently began an advertising campaign to publicize the problem.
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“What jumps out is that we really still have a long way to go,” Meropol said.
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Uneven progress
Among the report’s findings:
*Cancer mortality is improving faster among men, with drops in death rates of 2.6 percent a year compared with 1.8 percent for women.
*Lung cancer explains much of the gender difference. Male death rates are dropping about 2 percent a year while female death rates finally are holding steady after years of increases. Smoking rates fell for men before they did for women.
*New breast cancer diagnoses are dropping about 3.5 percent a year, a previously reported decline due either to women shunning postmenopausal hormone therapy or to fewer getting mammograms.
— Associated Press