Interesting Cancer Statistics

The American Cancer Society releases a variety of statistics on a regular basis. Here are some interesting stats from the group's most recent report:

Cancer death rates dropped by 11.4 percent for women between 1991 and 2005, with a 37percent decline in deaths from breast cancer and a 24 percent decrease in deaths from colorectal cancer.

The three leading cancer killers in men are lung, prostate and colorectal cancer. In women, they are lung (accounting for 26 percent of all cancer deaths), breast and colorectal cancer.

Men have a 44 percent chance of developing cancer during their lifetime and women a 37 percent chance, although women are more likely to have the disease earlier (before age 60).

Lung cancer shows the greatest regional variation in cancer incidence, ranging from a low of 39.6 cases per 100,000 in men and 22.4 per 100,000 in women in Utah to 136.2in men and 76.2 in women in Kentucky. These statistics correlate directly to smoking rates in the two states, with Utah having the lowest prevalence in adult smoking in the country, and Kentucky the highest.

Blacks still assume a disproportionate share of the cancer burden, with black men being 18 percent more likely to develop cancer and 36 percent more likely to die. Black women have a 6 percent lower incidence rate but this is more than made up for with a death rate, which is 17 percent higher than that seen in white women.
The five-year survival rate for children with cancer is now 80 percent, up from only 58 percent for those diagnosed in the mid-1970s. But cancer is still the second leading cause of death in youngsters aged 1 to 14 (after accidents), with leukemia being the most common cancer diagnosed.

Cancer survivors are about 14 percent more likely to develop a new cancer than individuals who have never had a cancer diagnosis; almost 900,000 cancer survivors have been diagnosed with more than one cancer. Patients diagnosed with tobacco-related cancers, such as cancers of the oral cavity, lung, esophagus, kidney, and urinary bladder, have the highest risk for a second cancer because smoking is a risk factor for at least 15 types of cancer. Breast cancer survivors comprise almost half of women who develop a second cancer.

Interesting answers that, in my mind, only create many more questions. Like Why? Why are cancer survivors more likely to get a different type of cancer? Why is the cancer rate so high in black Americans? Why the variation in lung cancer cases from state to state? We may think we know the answers, just like nutritionists believed, until recently, that selenium helps prevent prostate cancer. (apparently, it doesn't) A few questions to ponder.

Feel good and keep smiling! Pat & Pattie