Even as more people are developing cancer worldwide, survival is also going up, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Heart disease remains the number one cause of death worldwide, but cancer is coming up quickly. Needa Zaidi, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins, says the data point to much better outcomes even though more people are developing cancer.

Zaidi: The chances of surviving breast cancer were about 75% in 1975 and today, they’re about 90%. So all comers with breast cancer, the odds are very good and the treatments have gotten better. This improvement is largely due to an uptake in the screenings so now more people are getting their mammograms routinely, more people are getting their colonoscopies and Pap smears routinely. The other component that’s leading to this increase is that there’s been more focus on primary prevention and lifestyle modifications.  :33

Zaidi says things like weight loss and more healthful diets are the kinds of factors people have in their control that may help reduce lifetime cancer risk. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.