For the first time in its 75-year history of analyzing cancer data, the survival rate for all cancers combined reached 70% for the period from 2015 through 2021, according to a report released by the American Cancer Society this week.
“This stunning victory is largely the result of decades of cancer research that provided clinicians with the tools to treat the disease more effectively, turning many cancers from a death sentence into a chronic disease,” said Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director for surveillance research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the report.
Dr. Bill Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, also joined Audacy station KCBS Radio in the Bay Area this week to discuss the report.
“I think for those cancers that we can screen for, we are definitely finding those cancers earlier. And I think really the improvement in therapies has really been spectacular…” said Dahut. “New therapies available, much more targeted therapies. And for the population at large, you know, having less tobacco use has really led to a decrease in cancer mortality. So those three things have been actually really important.”
Here are a few examples of significant survival gains since the 1990s: myeloma survival rates increased from 32% to 62%, liver cancer survival increased from 7% to 22% and lung cancer survival rates increased from 15% to 28%. However, lung cancer is still expected to cause the most cancer deaths this year.
Many people diagnosed with lung cancer (three in four) have an advanced stage of the disease. Still, five-year survival increased since the mid-1990s from 20% to 37% for regional-stage disease and from 2% to 10% for distant-stage disease.
While smoking rates have decreased, Dahut said about 80% of all lung cancers are related to tobacco use. However, he said “we do need to be more and more aware of lung cancers in light smokers and never smokers.”
ACS researchers compiled the most recent findings on population-based cancer occurrence and outcomes using data collected by central cancer registries for its most recent study. Findings indicate that there will be more than 2 million new cancer diagnoses in the U.S. this year, an estimated 5,800 each day. Additionally, the report predicts that 626,140 people will die from cancer this year.
“Although the cancer mortality rate has continued to decline through 2023, dropping by a total of 34% since its peak in 1991 and averting 4.8 million cancer deaths, incidence continues to increase for many common cancers, including breast, prostate, liver (female), melanoma (female), oral cavity, pancreas, and uterine corpus (endometrial),” the ACS said.
Looking to the future, there are also new challenges, ACS CEO Shane Jacobson warned.
“For decades, the federal government has been the largest funder of cancer research, which has translated to longer lives for people with even the most fatal cancers,” he explained. “But now, threats to cancer research funding and significant impact to access to health insurance could reverse this progress and stall future breakthroughs. We can’t stop now. There is still much work to be done.”
ACS’s report was published in the CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, its flagship journal. More information is available on cancer.org.