Cancer Death Rates Keep Dropping
The American Cancer Society has just published "Cancer Statistics, 2010", its annual estimates of the number of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States. Did you know that since 1990 the rate of death from all cancers combined for men of all races combined has fallen 21%? Yet thanks to a longer life expectancy and advances in preventing people from dying from e.g. heart attacks 44 of every 100 men will develop an invasive cancer in their lifetime. Thanks to smoking women are catching up to men on the categories you don't want to be in and falling behind in the ones you do, like decreasing death rates.
After accidents comes cancer on the list of causes of death in children. The good news is that the overall 5-year survival rate is now 81% and the trend is in the right direction. For acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) the 5-year survival rates are now 89% and 95% respectively.
In all, 562,875 Americans died of cancer in the most recent year for which all data has been collected. For men and women aged 40 - 79 cancer is leading cause of death. In fact, it's the leading cause of death among everyone under the age of 85 combined beating out heart disease by a body count of 475,211 to 380,791.
There's lots more in the report and it's free at the link above.
