on PinterestA new report shows that more Americans are surviving cancer than ever before.
on PinterestA new report shows that more Americans are surviving cancer than ever before. Getty Images
- Cancer survival rates have reached a record high, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS).
- The positive trend is attributed to innovations in precision treatment, expanded screening, and reduced tobacco use.
- Despite the overall improvement in survival rates, Native Americans, Black Americans, and rural populations continue to face higher rates of death from cancer.
People are living longer after a cancer diagnosis than ever before.
According to a new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS), 70% of those who receive a cancer diagnosis survive for five or more years compared to 49% in the mid-1970s.
People diagnosed with historically deadly cancers are also now living much longer than they would have in the mid-1990s.
For myeloma, survival jumped from 32% to 62%; for liver cancer, from 7% to 22%; and for lung cancer, from 15% to 28%.
The findings of this report are based on people diagnosed from 2015 to 2021 and point to cancer shifting from “a death sentence to a chronic disease,” Rebecca Siegel, MPH, the American Cancer Society’s senior scientific director of surveillance research and the report’s lead author, said in a news release.
Three key factors are driving this progress: Research-driven innovations, expanded screening efforts, and decades of declining tobacco use. Here’s what you need to know.
Cancer research, treatment innovations
Research played a pivotal role in making cancer treatment more targeted and effective.
Speaking on a call with journalists, William Dahut, MD, the American Cancer Society’s chief scientific officer, said that in the 1990s, doctors used “very blunt instruments” to treat patients.
Today, therapies target specific cancer mutations and harness the body’s immune system to fight the disease.
“Being able to understand the cancer genome really, totally changed the way we began to think of cancer treatment,” Dahut said. He added that layering targeted therapies with immunotherapy has had “the most dramatic effect” on survival rates.
Improved cancer screening, early detection
Early detection through screening has dramatically improved survival rates for breast, cervical, prostate, colorectal, and lung cancers, according to the new ACS report.
Catching cancer early makes it far more treatable — yet screening rates for lung cancer, the most deadly form of the disease, remain low.
“The screening numbers are abysmal for a screening test that has been shown to actually change survival,” Dahut said.
According to the ACS, doctors only screen nearly 19% of eligible Americans for lung cancer. The organization cites a lack of access to screening and education about eligibility as the reason so few people are screened.
Current eligibility guidelines also exclude a growing number of patients, particularly people who have never smoked or have only smoked lightly.
Suresh Ramalingam, MD, executive director of Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute, said early detection “has the ability to reduce deaths related to lung cancer by 20%.”
He told Healthline that lung cancer screening has been available for only about 15 years, and new guidelines expanding eligibility could be issued within the next five years.
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