(8 Jan 2020) Researchers are reporting the largest-ever one-year decline in the U.S. cancer death rate, and they are crediting advances in the treatment of lung tumors. The overall cancer death rate has been falling since 1991, and usually drops about 1.5% a year. But it fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017, according to a new report by the American Cancer Society.
That's the largest drop ever seen in national cancer statistics that go back to 1930, said Rebecca Siegel, the report's lead author.
"It's absolutely driven by lung cancer," which accounts for about a quarter of all cancer deaths each year, she said. Take lung cancer out of the mix, and the 2017 rate drop is only 1.4%, she added.
Government researchers previously reported a slightly lower drop in the cancer death rate for the same period. But the Cancer Society calculates the death rate differently, and on Wednesday said the drop was larger, and record-setting.
The numbers were published online Wednesday by CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Each January, the Cancer Society gathers the most recently available cancer statistics and uses then to estimate cancer diagnoses and cancer deaths expected to occur in the new year. The organization is predicting about 1.8 million new cancer cases and 605,000 cancer deaths in 2020.
Most lung cancer cases are tied to smoking, and decades of declining smoking rates means lower rates of new lung cancer illnesses as well as deaths.
Cancer deaths rates fell by nearly 30% from 2008 through 2017.
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