Record Drop in US Cancer Death Rate

From 2017 to 2018, cancer deaths dropped by 2.4 percent, the largest single-year improvement recorded in 70 years of American Cancer Society annual cancer reports.

asher jones
| 2 min read
cancer death rate acs american cancer society malignancy lung mortality racial disparity

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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 ...

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Meet the Author

  • asher jones

    Asher Jones

    Asher is a former editorial intern at The Scientist. She completed a PhD in entomology from Penn State University, and she was a 2020 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Voice of America. You can find more of her work here.

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