WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The cancer death rate declined by 29 percent from 1991 to 2017, including a 2.2 percent drop from 2016 to 2017, the largest single-year drop in cancer mortality ever reported, according to the American Cancer Society’s annual report on cancer rates and trends.
The steady 26-year decline in overall cancer mortality is driven by long-term drops in death rates for the four major cancers -- lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate, although recent trends are mixed.
The pace of mortality reductions for lung cancer -- the leading cause of cancer death -- accelerated in recent years (from 2% per year to 4% overall) spurring the record one-year drop in overall cancer mortality. In contrast, progress slowed for colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers. The article appears early online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.