A record 70% of cancer patients are living five years past their diagnosis, according to a report released Tuesday by the American Cancer Society.
The annual analysis of cancer statistics says early detection and improved treatment have helped pull five-year survival rates up from just 49% in the mid-1970s.
“This stunning victory is largely the result of decades of cancer research that provided clinicians with the tools to treat the disease more effectively, turning many cancers from a death sentence into a chronic disease,” Rebecca Siegel, the report’s lead author, said in a statement.
Gains have been especially dramatic among the most fearsome forms of the disease, including advanced-stage bone marrow, liver and lung cancers.
Five-year survival rates for metastatic cancers rose to 35% during 2015 to 2021, the time period measured by the report, compared to just 17% in the mid-1990s.
Immunotherapies, which activate the body’s natural defenses to attack cancer, have been critical to improving outcomes, experts say. In some cases, these serve as “functional cures,” said UPMC Hillman Cancer Center oncologist Dr. Diwakar Davar.
Targeted therapies that can go after specific genes or proteins within cancer cells are also being used more often. This type of treatment can keep metastatic cancer at bay for years, according to Davar, who specializes in treating advanced melanoma, the most dangerous type of skin cancer.
Between 1970 and 2023, cancer mortality declined by more than two-thirds in children and more than one-half in teenagers, largely because of improvements in leukemia treatments. Progress has slowed in recent years, the report notes.
“Aggressive, difficult-to-treat cancer is going to remain an aggressive, difficult-to treat-cancer,” said Dr. Dan McKeone, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Penn State Health. “We’ll chip away at it over time hopefully, but we’re not going to see huge leaps and bounds absent some new technology.”
With people generally living longer post-diagnosis, doctors must turn their attention toward limiting the side effects of treatment, said Dr. Chirag Shah, chair of radiation oncology at the Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute.
Chemotherapy and radiation treatments can raise future cancer risk by damaging the DNA of healthy tissue, according to the American Cancer Society. The group says heart issues can also result from those treatments as well as targeted therapy and immunotherapy.
The question for Shah: “If we’re getting such good outcomes, how do we actually give less treatment and maintain those outcomes?”
Less encouraging are stubborn diagnosis rates. Specifically, breast, prostate, liver, mouth, pancreatic and endometrial cancers are on the rise as well as melanoma.
The American Cancer Society projects about 2.1 million new cancer diagnoses this year and 626,000 deaths from the disease.
Doctors say the steady incidence rates can’t be fully attributed to better screening practices. For instance, an uptick in colon cancer among young people could come from diet and lack of exercise, according to the Cancer Research Institute.
And the steep decline in smoking — a huge win for cancer prevention — may be offset by the emergence of vaping, in Davar’s view. E-cigarettes have not been conclusively linked the cancer, but many devices contain carcinogenic ingredients.
“We have eliminated one problem, but we haven’t eliminated all problems,” Davar said.
Socioeconomic, racial and ethnic disparities in cancer outcomes remain, the report says. Native American people still face some of the most outsize mortality, with death rates double those of white people for cancers of the kidney, liver, stomach and cervix.
The organization also warns federal efforts to slash cancer research and changes to health insurance access, like reductions in Obamacare subsidies and looming cuts to Medicaid, could stall progress.
The federal government has been the nation’s largest funder of cancer research for decades and critical to extending the lives of people with cancer, according to Shane Jacobson, CEO of the American Cancer Society.
“We can’t stop now,” Jacobson said. “There is still much work to be done.”
