CDC Study Shows Growing Number of Cancer Survivors

If it feels like you know more cancer survivors lately, don't worry about an increase in the dreaded disease. Blame it on a higher survival rate.

14 mar 2011--According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of cancer survivors is rapidly increasing as technology for early detection, public awareness and treatment options improve. The CDCP released a report Friday indicating that a mere 3 million Americans were cancer survivors in 1971; in 2007, the last year for which data is available, that number had increased to 11.7 million. That means there are almost as many cancer survivors in the United States as there are people in Illinois.

Increasing public awareness of cancer symptoms and the campaign to increase cancer screenings has helped to increase the number of survivors as have advances in cancer treatment. The majority of the cancer survivors alive when these numbers were developed had been treated for breast, prostate or colorectal cancers. Those three types of cancers accounted for more than half the survivors.

The report also pointed out that nearly two-thirds of patients diagnosed with cancer had lived at least five years after their diagnosis. The CDCP advised in the report that physicians and other medical professionals should become accustomed to treating cancer survivors and should learn to recognize the special health needs of those patients.

"Public health and health-care professionals should understand the potential long-term needs of cancer survivors, engage in health promotion (e.g., urging cancer screening and smoking cessation), and ensure coordination of follow-up care for this growing population," the report said.

This study excluded patients with in situ cancer and non-melanoma skin cancer in the developing of the statistics. Various types of cancer are considered more treatable than others and several, including breast cancer, are more often screened for, but the study indicates that on the whole, cancer is becoming more survivable.