22 Million Survivors: Why A Record Number of People Are Living After Cancer

The report, called "Cancer Treatment and Survivorship Statistics," is published every three years by the American Cancer Society and the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (NCI).

According to the report, the term "cancer survivor" refers to any person who has a history of cancer from the point of diagnosis through the rest of their life.

What’s encouraging is that the predicted rise in cancer survivors is the opposite trend of what we're seeing for cancer incidence ratesthat is, the number of people that get cancerwhich is declining for men and staying stable for women.

This is good news. Fewer or the same number of people are getting cancer to begin with, and more people who do get cancer are surviving it.

The report also broke down these numbers, and found that two-thirds of cancer survivors are over the age of 65, while only one in 10 is under 50.

It’s predicted that for men, the highest number of cancer survivors by 2030 will be those previously diagnosed with:

1. Prostate cancer (5,017,810 survivors)
2. Colon & rectum cancer (994,210 survivors)
3. Melanoma (936,980 survivors)
4. Urinary/ bladder cancer (832,910 survivors)
5. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (535,870 survivors)

And for women:

1. Breast cancer (4,957,960 survivors)
2. Uterine cancer (1,023,290 survivors)
3. Thyroid cancer (989,340 survivors)
4. Colon & rectum cancer (965,590 survivors)
5. Melanoma (888,740 survivors)

New Drugs and Better Detection: The “Why” Behind The Rising Numbers

The rapid increase in cancer survivors that the report projects has a lot to do with the fact that the population is growing generallyand growing older.

But that's not the only reason for the rise; according to the report, the increase is also due to "advances in treatment and early detection."

In recent years, the pace of approval for new cancer treatments has reached a new record. In 2018 alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 19 completely new cancer drugs and drug combinations, and approved 25 new uses for already approved cancer drugs (for example, the promising immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, or Keytruda, which was already approved to treat melanoma, advanced non-small cell lung cancer, and several other cancers, was approved to treat six more specific cancer types in 2018, including a certain type of cervical cancer and B-cell lymphoma).

In 2018, the total number of cancer drug approvals was the highest it's ever been in a given yearbreaking the previous record from 1996.

Whole New Classes of Drugs

Every one of these new drugs plays into the rising number of cancer survivors, but perhaps the most influential of all are those in the immunotherapy category.

"In the last several years, there’s been an explosion of information that enables us to help larger numbers of patients by getting their body’s own immune system to fight this disease," Dr. Steven Rosenberg, Chief of Surgery at the NCI one of the pioneers of immunotherapy, previously told SurvivorNet.

And Dr. Jim Allison, Chair of the Department of Immunology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, told us that this is just the beginning; as researchers combine immunotherapy drugs with different targeted agents, the possibilities are only going to expand.

"Immunotherapy is rather unique in that for the first time, we’re getting truly curative therapies in many kinds of disease," Dr. Allison said. "And not just in melanoma but in lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Merkel cell cancer, head and neck cancer. It goes on and on."

Earlier Detection

Advances in screening technologies (think 3D mammograms) and more accurate blood tests have contributed to the rising survivor numbers, too. People are finding their cancers at earlier stagesbefore the malignant cells have had a chance to spread throughout the bodymaking them more likely to beat their cancers and live to join the ranks of survivors. Education and awareness have gone a long way, too, as people have increasingly tuned in to signs and symptoms of cancer, and have proactively visited their doctors for routine screenings.

As new treatments enter the scene and the population of survivors, in turn, continues to rise, it’s going to become all the more imperative that we address the overall health, relationships, sex lives, body image, diet, habits, and happiness of those living both with and after cancer.

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