Cancer death rate in the US is the lowest ever in 40 years

The rate at which patients are dying from cancer in the United States has reached a new forty-year low according to a new report from the American Cancer Society. 

This means that the "big C" is no longer the death sentence it once in the United States.

A study was published in A Cancer Journal For Clinicians, by the American Cancer Society that shows a major drop in cancer deaths since 1991.

“The cancer mortality rate has decreased continuously since 1991,” wrote the authors of the report in their conclusion, “resulting in an overall drop of 33% and approximately 3.8 million cancer deaths averted.”

Researchers tied the drop in cancer rates to a number of factors, the least of which was a reduction in smoking as well as early detection and the willingness of patients to be screened for some of cancer's biggest killers. 

“This steady progress,” the researchers wrote, “is because of reductions in smoking [and the] uptake of screening for breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers.”

Improved treatment methods like adjuvant chemotherapies for colon and breast cancers have also played a major role in reducing death from cancer. 

“More recently,” the researchers added, “advances in the development of targeted treatment and immunotherapy have accelerated progress in lung cancer mortality well beyond reductions in incidence.”

The most important factor in the reduction of deaths from cancer, however, has been the development of new treatments that have provided doctors with better tools to manage more difficult forms of cancer. 

“Treatment breakthroughs have particularly improved the management of some difficult-to-treat cancers, such as nonsmall cell lung cancer and metastatic melanoma,” the authors of the study wrote. 

Dr. Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, called the findings “truly formidable” in an interview with CNN.

“New revelations for prevention, for early detection and for treatment have resulted in true, meaningful gains in many of the 200 diseases that we call cancer,” Dr. Knudsen told CNN.

The study noted that the biggest cancer concern now is the rising number of breast and prostate cancer in modern society. 

According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, breast cancer affected roughly 129.7 people out of 100,000 in 2019 while prostate cancer affected 111.6 per 100,000. 

One of the most interesting discoveries in the American Cancer Society’s study found that the human papillomavirus vaccine was directly connected to reduced cancer deaths.

This was due to a 65% reduction in cervical cancer rates among women from 2012 to 2019, which corresponded to the first cohort of people who would have received the human papillomavirus vaccine.

The study also found that even while the world was suffering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, cancer death rates continued to drop. 

“Despite the pandemic, and in contrast with other leading causes of death,” the study’s authors wrote,” the cancer death rate continued to decline from 2019 to 2020 (by 1.5%).”