According to a report from the American Cancer Society there will be 1,529,560 new cancer cases in the United States in 2010 and 569,490 deaths.
Death rates for all cancer types fell by 2 percent a year from 2001 to 2006 among men and 1.5 percent per year from 2002 to 2006 in women. The reduced death rate from cancer was due a decline in smoking, better treatment and earlier detection.
New cases of colorectal cancer fell 3 percent a year in men and 2.2 percent a year for women from 1998 to 2006, while lung cancer rates have fallen in men by 1.8 percent each year since 1991 and finally started leveling off among women. Cancer remains one iof the primary illnesses impacting Americans according to the American Association for Critical Illness Insurance.
The drops in mortality rates have meant that nearly 800,000 people who would have died prematurely from cancer over the past 20 years did not.
The overall U.S. death rate from cancer in 2007 was 178.4 per 100,000 people, a 1.3 percent drop from 2006, when the rate was 180.7 per 100,000.
Mortality rates have decreased by 21 percent among men and by 12 percent among women, due primarily to declines in smoking, better treatments, and earlier detection of cancer. Lung cancer remains the No. 1 cancer killer of both men and women in the United States. Breast cancer comes in No. 2 for women, prostate cancer is the second most common killer of men, and colon cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death for both sexes.