Researchers find significant decrease in number of cancer deaths

For a prolonged period of time, cancer in the United States has been one of the leading causes of death. However, researchers have found that the number of cancer survivors has increased by more than a million just in the past year, and that from 2016 to 2019, the rate of people surviving cancer has only accelerated.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer killed approximately 602,350 people in 2020.

The annual report from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) discovered that cancer death rate in the United States has decreased by 32% from 1991 to 2019. The AACR estimates that this decrease has saved 3.5 million lives. 

New research over the last 10 years has seen “unprecedented progress,” and now more people than ever are beating cancer.

“The U.S. cancer death rate is steadily declining, and more people than ever before are living longer and fuller lives after a cancer diagnosis,” the report says. “In fact, the number of children and adults living with a history of cancer exceeded a record 18 million in January 2022.”

Researchers said the reason for the higher survival rate is “remarkable advances” in medical research and cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment.

Between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved eight new therapeutics which are specifically targeted to fight cancer, and 10 therapeutics for use for new cancer types along with two new diagnostic imaging agents have already been signed off.

“We have a now a revolution in immune therapies. And when you put that together with the combination of targeted therapies, chemo and radiation therapy, we now have patients that would have died within two years of a diagnosis living 15, 20, 25, 39 years, essentially cured of their malignancies,” AACR President Lisa Coussens said.