New Cancer Cases and Overall Disease Mortality Rates Decline Download Complimentary Source PDF

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: November 25, 2008 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

ATLANTA, Nov. 25 -- Both cancer incidence and overall death rates are edging down in the U.S., driven largely by declines in some of the most common malignancies, according to an annual national report. Action Points   Explain to interested patients that rates of some of the most common types of cancer are declining, except for lung cancer.  Lung cancer death rates and incidence vary widely by state, and may be a result of smoking prevalence, which also varies regionally. Cancer mortality rates dropped an average of 1.8% per year from 2002 through 2005, while the number of new cases fell an average of 0.8% per year from 1999 through 2005, according to the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, published in the Dec. 3 issue of theJournal of the National Cancer Institute. The decline marks the first simultaneous drop in incidence and death rates in the history of the report, wrote epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal, D.V.M., Ph.D., of the American Cancer Society, and colleagues at the CDC, NCI, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries./.../