US cancer mortality drops 25 percent in quarter century

The cancer death rate in the United States has dropped 25 percent from a peak in 1991, a decline of around 2.1 million deaths, new research released on Thursday shows.

The dramatic change over the last quarter-century is chiefly the result of a steady decline in smoking combined with medical advances in early tumor detection and treatment, according to an annual report by the American Cancer Society (ACS).

Patients suffering from four types of cancer accounted for the largest declines in mortality.

Lung cancer deaths among men plummeted by 43 percent between 1990 and 2014 and 17 percent among women between 2002 and 2014.

The breast cancer mortality rate for women decreased by 38 percent between 1989 and 2014.

The drop is even more dramatic among men suffering from prostate cancer -- 51 percent between 1993 and 2014 -- and in colon cancer deaths among both sexes, which plunged 51 percent between 1976 and 2014.

Some 1.68 million new cases of cancer will emerge in the United States this year, the report predicts, along with 600,000 deaths from the disease.

The incidence of cancer over the past decade has remained stable among women and declined by almost two percent a year among men.

The mortality rate from the disease has dropped by around 1.5 percent annually among both sexes.

"The continuing drops in the cancer death rate are a powerful sign of the potential we have to reduce cancer's deadly toll," ACS chief medical officer Otis W. Brawley said in a statement.

The report was published in CA: A Journal for Clinicians.