It is becoming increasingly less common for people to die from cancer than they have in more than three decades.
A study published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians found that the cancer death rate across the U.S. has dropped by 33 percent since 1991 and that about 3.8 million lives were saved thanks to improvements in technology.
"New revelations for prevention, for early detection, and for treatment have resulted in true, meaningful gains in many of the 200 diseases that we call cancer," Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society, told CNN.
In addition to better medical practices, increased HPV vaccinations, which were first approved in 2006, are also connected to the drop in cancer deaths, according to the study, as the rate of new cervical cancer diagnoses significantly declined.
While deaths are down, the rate of confirmed cancer cases continues to rise. The same report also found that there could be as many as two million new cases this year. That measures out to more than 5,000 per day, with 600,000 people expected to pass away as a result of their diagnosis.
Various cancers are still on the rise. Breast cancer diagnoses have steadily increased by 0.5 percent each year since the mid 2000s. Prostate cancer cases have jumped 3 percent each year since 2014 through 2019, and uterine corpus cancer has risen by 1 percent annually since the mid 2000s in women 50 and older.
Black patients remain much more likely to die from cancer with a 12 percent higher rate than white patients in 2020. Black men are 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer.
"Expanding access to care and increasing investment for the broad application of existing cancer control interventions and for research to advance treatment options and develop successful interventions to reduce inequalities would help mitigate disparities and accelerate progress against cancer," wrote the authors of the study.
