TUESDAY, Oct. 4, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- The cancer death rate in the United States is continuing to decline, but more so for men than for women, according to a new report.
Overall, cancer mortality fell 1.5 percent per year from 1993 to 2002 in men, and by 0.8 percent in women during roughly the same time frame, the report found. Death rates declined for 12 of the top 15 cancers striking men, and nine of the top 15 cancers in women.
Lung cancer remains the leading cancer killer for both sexes, according to the Annual Report to the Nation, a collaborative effort by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.
"We are seeing a sustained and continued decline in deaths due to cancer," said report co-author Brenda K. Edwards, an associate director for the surveillance research program at NCI. "The rates for both men and women [overall] continue to go down."
The report appears in the Oct. 5 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The rate at which new cancers are diagnosed, called the cancer incidence rate, has been stable for men from 1995 to 2002 and increased slightly -- 0.3 percent for women from 1987 to 2002.
Overall, the new report is mostly good news, said Ahmedin Jemal, program director of cancer occurrence for the American Cancer Society. "Overall, it is decreasing," he said of the cancer death rate. "The decline is less pronounced for women."
He attributed that to high rates of tobacco-related cancer deaths in women. "Tobacco-related deaths have been decreasing since 1990 in men," he said. "But they are peaking just now in women."
The report findings reflect progress in early detection, Edwards said, and a stronger emphasis in recent years on prevention. "There is lot more interest in the role of diet, weight control and physical activity [to minimize risk]," she said.
Prevention measures are important, Jemal said, as is early detection. In particular, he pointed out, "colorectal cancer screening is underutilized. The message is not out."
Research from a second study in the journal contained sobering news for female survivors of Hodgkin's lymphoma: Their risk for breast cancer rises later in life.
NCI researchers analyzed data from a case-control study involving nearly 4,000 women who had survived Hodgkin's lymphoma for at least one year. All of the women had been diagnosed at age 30 or younger between 1965 and 1994.
The researchers found that the cumulative, absolute risk of developing breast cancer increased as the age of the women rose at end of follow-up. It also rose with time elapsed since diagnosis, and with the amount of radiation given during treatment. Depending on these variables, some women survivors faced a 19 percent risk of getting the cancer by age 50, compared to a 2 percent risk for white women the same age in the general population.
In an accompanying editorial, experts questioned the use of routine radiation therapy -- which is thought to raise breast cancer risk -- for the treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma when other available treatments may yield the same success.
More information
To learn more about cancer prevention, visit the American Cancer Society.
