The nation’s cancer report is largely good news, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Your risk of dying from cancer is largely on the downswing, the nation’s annual report on cancers finds. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says he is encouraged by some of the statistics.

Nelson: There was some good news out of this. They took a look at cancer in this millennium, from 2001 to 2019. They did find a couple of cancers that did seem to have increased incidence. Pancreas cancer, kidney cancer, notably, and a little bit increased melanoma, liver cancer. Most of the incidence declined over that period and death rates definitely declined for most of the cancers. The ones that didn’t decline so much were cancers of the bones and the extremities we call sarcomas, brain cancers and pancreas cancer.  :31

Nelson says this is all great news and it speaks to the benefits of screening, prompt treatment, and a huge array of new treatments and strategies for managing cancers of many types. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.