What Does the Latest Cancer Report Tell Us?

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

What does the latest cancer report tell us? Elizabeth Tracey reports

The American Cancer Society produces an annual report to the nation on how we’re doing in the fight against cancer. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, describes the latest statistics.

Nelson: Looking in the period from 2013 to 2017, cancer incidence rates were fairly stable. The good news is that cancer death rates, the propensity to die from a cancer, decreased for both men and women. Including 11 of the 19 more common cancers in men, and 14 of the more common cancers, 14 of the 20 more common cancers in women. Basically what we’re really seeing in the last few years is lung cancer death rates are falling, that’s almost certainly attributable to better treatment, a little bit to screening.  :32

Nelson says cancers that appear to be on the upswing include pancreas and colorectal. He notes that improved and expanded screening for cancer detects more cases, but for most kinds of cancer mortality is stable or declining. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.