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The US cancer death rate has fallen by 31 percent since its peak in 1991, according to the latest annual cancer statistics report from the American Cancer Society published yesterday (January 12) in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Between 2017 and 2018, cancer mortality dropped by 2.4 percent, beating the previous year’s record for an annual decline of 2.2 percent. In 2017, the cancer death rate was 152.6 per 100,000 people, and in 2018 this rate was 149 per 100,000.
A lower rate of deaths from lung cancer, the cancer that kills the most people each year, accounted for almost half of the overall decline in cancer mortality. In 2018, 142,081 individuals died of lung/bronchus cancer, according to the report. Researchers say this progress is due to reductions in smoking and improvements in cancer detection and treatment. In contrast, the drop in death rates of ...
