(RxWiki News) The numbers are in and the annual report on cancer prevention and detection is out.
This year, there's good news and bad news, according to the authors of the report.
"While some measures of cancer prevention and early detection have improved over time, others have either stabilized or worsened," said lead report author Ann Goding Sauer in a press release. "For example, cigarette smoking among U.S. adults has dropped to 15% but remains at the level of the 1970s in some geographic areas and population groups."
The new report from the American Cancer Society looked at many areas, including cancer risk factors and early detection methods. Some highlights from the report include the following:
- Between 1999 and 2015, cigarette smoking among high school students dropped from 29 percent to 9 percent, according to the report. Smoking rates varied by state.
- Around half of adults in 2015 said they got the recommended amount of exercise. Exercise can lower the risk for some types of cancer.
- Data from 2011 to 2014 suggested that around 28 percent of adults drank too much alcohol, which can raise cancer risk.
- High school girls reported using tanning beds less in recent years. In 2009, 25 percent of high school girls said they used the devices, which have been linked to skin cancer. In 2015, that figure had dropped to 11 percent.
- Around half of women age 40 or older said they had received a mammogram — a test used to detect breast cancer — within the previous year. Sixty-four percent said they had received a mammogram within the previous two years.
"The bottom line is that despite improvements in some areas of cancer prevention and early detection, systematic efforts to further reduce the suffering and death from cancer are needed," Sauer said.
Talk to your health care provider about how to lower your risk for cancer.
This report was published on the American Cancer Society website.
Information on funding sources and potential conflicts of interest was not available at the time of publication.
