Study: U.S. Cancer Death Rate Hits 25-Year Low

The rate of Americans dying from cancer hit a 25-year low, according to a study from the American Cancer Society published Tuesday.

The study, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, shows the overall cancer death rate continuously declined between 1991 and 2006 by 27 percent.

And the death rate has slowed to the point where more people are surviving cancer. Over the past 25 years, 2.6 million fewer people died from cancer.

“The continued decline in the cancer death rate over the past 25 years is really good news and was a little bit of a surprise, only because the other leading causes of death in the US are starting to flatten. So we’ve been wondering if that’s going to happen for cancer as well, but so far it hasn’t,” Rebecca Siegel, the study’s lead author, told CNN.

Although the number of deaths from cancer has decreased from 25 years ago, cancer still remains one of the three leading causes of death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) listed cancer as the second leading cause of death in the U.S.

Around the world, the number of people diagnosed with cancer seems to be increasing. A World Health Organization (WHO) report from September found that 18.1 million people worldwide had been diagnosed with cancer in 2018, and 9.6 million people died from it.