Deaths from lung, breast, prostate cancer dip

United States cancer mortality rates have dropped 26% since 1991, new report indicates

The good news: U.S. cancer death rates have continued to fall.

The bad news: While the incidence has dropped for some cancers, it has risen for others.

Those conclusions, according to a story by Judy George on the MedPage Today website yesterday, are based on a statistical report from the American Cancer Society.

Cancer mortality in the U.S. fell 1.7% from 2015 to 2015 — a decline that "continued a long-running trend, with a 26% drop since 1991," George's piece indicates. 

Rebecca Siegel

Her story notes that "the reduction was fueled largely by fewer deaths from lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer," and cites information from Rebecca Siegel of the ACS and colleagues in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 

"Steady reductions in smoking, plus better detection and treatment, accounted for a significant part of the decline," the MedPage Today article adds.

Dr. Otis W. Brawley

The article also quotes Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the ACS, from a statement: "A decline in consumption of cigarettes is credited with being the most important factor in the drop in cancer death rates."

Over the past decade of available data, the story continues, "the overall cancer incidence in men fell by about 2% per year, with the pace accelerating in recent years."

But in women, "declines in lung and colorectal cancers were offset by increasing or stable rates for breast, uterine corpus and thyroid cancers and for melanoma."

Liver cancer incidence has also continued to rise in women.

Siegel's piece also says that researchers have predicted "1,735,350 new cancer cases and 609,640 cancer deaths in the United States in 2018."

More information about mortality rates can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.