Cancer cases to double - Short Takes: News at Deadline - study concerns the next fifty years in the United States - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Physician Executive, July-August, 2002 by James A. Hawkins

The good news is that Americans are expected to live longer in the next 50 years.

The bad news is it's more likely that many of them will develop cancer.

A new study predicts that the number of Americans diagnosed annually with cancer will double over the next 50 years, jumping from 1.3 million to 2.6 million. This could be a very costly burden to the health care system.

The study appeared in the journal Cancer and used newly compiled cancer data in conjunction with demographic projections from the census.

There has been a steady decline in the U.S. death rate from cancer during the 1990s. Researchers estimate that the average death rate from all types of cancer fell by about I percent a year from 1993 to 1999.

The four major deadly cancers are:

* Lung

* Colorectal

* Breast

* Prostate

They account for just over half of all the cancer deaths in the U.S.