Cancer death rates declining, new report says, but diagnosis rates are on the rise for women
Cancer death rates are falling but diagnoses among women have been increasing.
By Katherine Dillinger, CNN
(CNN) — A new report on cancer in the US shows a steady decline in overall deaths from 2001 through 2022. The rate of diagnoses among men fell from 2001 through 2013 and then stabilized through 2021 but these incidence rates among women increased slightly every year between 2003 and 2021.
Those trends were interrupted in 2020, when cancer incidence rates fell significantly, the report shows, possibly because of disruptions in medical care related to the Covid-19 pandemic. After 2020, they returned to expected levels. “Because fewer cancers were diagnosed in 2020, especially through screening, we may see a larger percentage of cancers diagnosed at a late stage in future years,” the report says.
The 2024 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer was published Monday in the journal Cancer. It’s based on data from cancer registries funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, and it’s released by those institutions, the American Cancer Society and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.
“Overall, cancer incidence and death rates continue to decline, representing changes in risk factors, increases in screening utilization, and advances in treatment,” the researchers write. “However, sustained disparities by race and ethnicity emphasize the need to fully understand the factors that create these differences so that they can be mitigated.”
Fewer people in the US are using tobacco, helping lower incidence and death rates for smoking-related cancers like lung, bladder and larynx, the report says. And these sustained declines in lung cancer have been a major contributor to the overall improvements in cancer death.
However, incidence rates are on the rise for several other cancers, including those linked with excess weight, such as pancreas and kidney cancers; uterine, breast and liver cancers among women; and colon and rectal cancers among adolescents and young adults.
Previously published research has shown that cancer diagnoses are shifting from older to younger adults and from men to women. Middle‐age women now have a slightly higher cancer risk than their male counterparts, and young women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease as young men, according to an American Cancer Society report published earlier this year.
The new report shows that incidence rates among women have risen 0.3% each year. The largest observed increase among women was for stomach cancer, which the researchers say may be largely due to a change in the classification of tumors by the World Health Organization.
Rates of breast cancer diagnoses are also gradually increasing, driven mostly by types of cancer that have been associated with factors like obesity, alcohol use and age when someone gives birth for the first time.
The data continues to show large racial disparities. For example, Black women have a 40% higher rate of death from breast cancer than White women, and their rate of death from uterine cancer is double that of White women.
Differences in access to care and less use of diagnostic procedures and treatment may account for some of the difference, the researchers say. “One additional potential risk factor disproportionately affecting Black women is the use of chemical hair relaxers, which may be associated with an increased risk of uterine cancer among postmenopausal women.”
Changing habits such as stopping tobacco use, staying at a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables, avoiding alcohol and protecting skin can all reduce risk of cancer. Screening can help find and treat cancers early, before they spread. Screenings are available and recommended for certain people for breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, cervical cancer, endometrial cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer.
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