US Cancer Death Rate Hits Milestone: 25 Years of Decline

How about some GOOD health news!  The cancer death rate has been declining for the last 25 years.  The cancer death rate was increasing until the early 1990’s when it started dropping and has been dropping ever since.  This good news comes from a continuing decline in deaths related to lung cancer.  In the 1960’s significant effort was put into exposing the dangers of smoking and it took quite a while before the impact of the decrease in smoking turned into a decrease in cancer deaths.

Unfortunately, cancer remains the #2 cause of death in the United States.  But the declining trend should still be a bright spot.  It just takes time for these declines to start to show up statistically.

The prostate cancer death rate has remained stagnate from 2013 to 2106 but up until then was falling.  There no longer is a recommendation in place from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for routine PSA blood testing.

Cancers of the liver, pancreas and uterus are linked to obesity.  Obesity remains a problem for affluent countries especially the U.S.  The obesity epidemic was first identified in the 1990’s and just like smoking it may take decades before we see a drop from new education on maintaining a healthy weight.

Key Points

  • 1The U.S. expects 600,000 cancer deaths this year.
  • 2Death rates from prostate cancer have been falling for two decades.
  • 3Liver cancer deaths are tied to hepatitis C infections and obesity.

But the lung cancer death rate dropped by nearly 50 percent among men since 1991.


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Written by HealthStatus
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our health risk assessment, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years.

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