About one in every 20 adults in the United States has survived cancer, including nearly one-fifth of all people over 65, according to new federal data.
The numbers, released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute, indicated that the number of cancer survivors increased by about 20 percent in just six years, to 11.7 million in 2007, the latest year for which figures were analyzed, from 9.8 million in 2001. In 1971, the number of cancer survivors was three million.
“There’s still a concept that cancer is a death sentence,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control. But, he said, “for many people with cancer there’s a need for them and their families and caregivers to recognize that this is a stage. They can live a long and healthy life.”
About 65 percent of cancer survivors have lived at least five years since receiving their diagnosis, 40 percent have lived 10 years or more, and nearly 10 percent have lived 25 years or longer.
The implications, Dr. Frieden said, are that many cancers are treatable and that it is just as important for people who have had cancer not to assume that they will necessarily die early.
“You might think, ‘I’ve had cancer — I don’t have to worry about eating right, quitting smoking, exercising,’ ” Dr. Frieden said. But people with cancer “need to be just as concerned about heart disease and other risks as they would otherwise,” he said.
The study defined a survivor as anyone who ever received a diagnosis of cancer who was alive on Jan. 1, 2007, and it did not indicate if the person was cured, undergoing treatment, afflicted with a chronic cancer-related illness, or in the process of dying at that time.
And the numbers tell only a piece of the cancer story. Some cancers, like lung cancer, are aggressive and difficult to treat. And the death rate from cancer, an indicator that many health experts consider a more accurate measure of progress in fighting the disease, has stayed virtually the same as it was in 1950 — about 200 deaths per 100,000 people a year, and about 1,000 deaths annually per 100,000 people over 65.
Dr. Frieden said the increase in cancer survivors was due to several factors, some of which varied by type of cancer. In some cases of breast cancer and colon cancer, for example, improved treatment and increased follow-up after treatment have helped increase survival. In others, like prostate cancer, an explosion in screening has identified many men with the disease, but the cancer is often so slow-growing that they would be unlikely to die from it. And other cancer diagnoses are simply the consequence of the country’s aging population and improved care for other diseases — in other words, people are living long enough to develop cancer.
About a million more of the survivors were women than men, partly because women live longer than men, and partly because breast and cervical cancers are often diagnosed and treated at younger ages. About 22 percent of the survivors had breast cancer, about 19 percent had prostate cancer, and about 10 percent had colorectal cancer.
The study identified only the type of cancer first diagnosed in each person; additional tumors or cancer diagnoses were not recorded.
Health authorities urged families and physicians to be aware of the health needs of cancer survivors.
“Having cancer may be the first stage, really, in the rest of your life,” Dr. Frieden said. “We need to continue to scale up” the services available for cancer survivors.
