Five-year cancer survival rates in the US topped 70% for the first time, the American Cancer Society’s annual report found.
That means that a person diagnosed with cancer is 70% as likely to be alive five years later as the average person. It represents steady progress: In the 1970s, the figure was 50%.
Improved screening can confuse the issue — if someone’s cancer is diagnosed early, they will survive longer after that diagnosis even without treatment — but evidence suggests that there has been real progress in treatment. Overall cancer incidence has remained broadly steady.
The ACS said many cancers had turned “from a death sentence into a chronic disease,” but warned that progress is threatened by cuts in science funding.
