The cancer death rate in the US fell by 2.4% between 2017 and 2018, the largest one-year decline on record and a sign of the impact of new treatments on lung cancer, in particular, according to the American Cancer Society.
It was the second year in a row of record declines, and progress continues and progress that has been made for more than a quarter of a century, the cancer company said in a report published Tuesday.
Overall, the cancer death rate has fallen 31% since its peak in 1991, according to the report published online in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
“It is very encouraging to see this continued decline in cancer deaths,” said Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the new report.
Despite the profits, cancer remains one of the nation’s leading causes of death, the second leading cause of death in the US, after heart disease. In 2018, it was responsible for more than 599,000 deaths, the report said.