Report: Cancer deaths decline

Earlier detection leading to quicker treatment are credited for lowering the death rate of cancer, the American Cancer Society reported Monday.

The society and others use that upbeat statistic to encourage more people over 50 to go for screenings.

From Tucson, Arizona Cancer Center spokesperson Donna Breckenridge said the numbers are so encouraging and added, “I think we have made so much progress” in detecting and treating cancers.

“New treatments are coming out, treatments that are more effective,” she said in a short interview.

She said nationwide 35 to 50 percent of Americans over 50 are being screened. “We’d like to see it go higher,” said Breckenridge.

Here’s one way screening helps.

Screening tests that can spot precancerous polyps in time to remove them and thus prevent cancer from forming.

Dr. Elizabeth Ward of the American Cancer Society said only about half the people who need to be screened are checked.

“If we’re seeing such great impact even at 50 percent screening rates, we think it could be much greater if we could get more of the population tested,” said Ward who helped write the report.

The new report said between 2002 and 2004 death rates dropped by an average of 2.1 percent year.

The Associated Press reported that the decline may not sound like much, but between 1993 and 2001 death rates dropped on average 1.1 percent a year.

Another gain is the result of new treatments, which are credited with doubling survival times for the most advanced patients.

In 1996, there was just one truly effective drug for colon cancer. Today, there are six more, giving patients a variety of chemotherapy cocktails to try to hold their tumors in check, said Dr. Louis Weiner, medical oncology chief at Philadelphia’s Fox Chase Cancer Center and a colorectal cancer specialist.

“I can tell you the offices of gastrointestinal oncologists around the country, and indeed around the world, are busier than ever because our patients are doing better,” he said.

Among the report’s other findings:

Cancer mortality is improving faster among men, with drops in death rates of 2.6 percent a year compared with 1.8 percent a year for women.

Lung cancer explains much of the gender difference. Male death rates are dropping about 2 percent a year while female death rates finally are holding steady after years of increases. Smoking rates fell for men before they did for women, so men reaped the benefits sooner.

Overall, the rate of new cancer diagnoses is inching down about one-half a percent a year.

New breast cancer diagnoses are dropping about 3.5 percent a year, a previously reported decline due either to women shunning postmenopausal hormone therapy or to fewer getting mammograms.

The annual report is a collaboration of the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

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