Some Heartening Headlines About Cancer

According to recent reports, the cancer rates in the United States are continuing to fall. It is thought there has been marked improvement in the screening and diagnosis, as well as treatment that is responsible for lower cancer rates.

Efficient screening programs are able to detect cancers early on, making it possible to make accurate diagnoses and also to commence timely effective treatments for cancers.

Cancer RateThe rate of new cancers in the United States actually fell by as much as 1% a year, divulged a new report.

What is also heartening is that for the first time, the rates of women dying from lung cancer are dropping. While lung cancer remains the biggest cancer killer in the nation as well as the world, it is a hopeful sign that fewer women, if marginally fewer women, are now dying of the deadly disease.

The decline in male rates of death from lung cancer came about as long as a decade ago, and it is only now that a similar decline is being seen among women as well.

Advances made in the fields of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate and lung cancer has contributed to the overall fall in rates of cancer, and according to Elizabeth Ward of the American Cancer Society, we may have turned a corner here and that hopefully this will be a continuing trend in the future as well.

It is being thought that falling rates of women smokers are likely responsible for this welcome downward trend.

Though some cancers are showing significant improvements, others do not hold out as much hope – for cancers of the panaceas, kidney and liver, and for melanoma, the mortality rates are actually still increasing.

So this remains a challenge, as does the fact that in a rapidly aging population, it is a challenge to keep in check what is essentially the disease of adult hood.