More Americans Are Surviving Cancer — What It Means for Older Adults

The five-year survival rate for cancer in the U.S. is at an all-time high, a new report highlights, reaching 70 percent for all cancers combined that were diagnosed between 2015 and 2021. This milestone, doctors and researchers say, can largely be attributed to advancements in screening tools and treatments.

This is especially good news for older Americans, as the average age of a cancer diagnosis in the U.S. is 67. About 88 percent of people diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. are 50 or older, according to the American Cancer Society.

“Seven in 10 people now survive their cancer five years or more, up from only half in the mid-70s,” said Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the report, published Jan. 13 in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. “This stunning victory is largely the result of decades of cancer research that provided clinicians with the tools to treat the disease more effectively, turning many cancers from a death sentence into a chronic disease.” 

For example, the HPV vaccine, approved in the U.S. in 2006, combined with cervical cancer screening, “can eliminate cervical cancer,” says Dr. Cardinale Smith, chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Other notable areas of progress include improved screening for breast cancer and lung cancer, Smith says, and decreased rates of smoking. Smoking rates in the U.S. fell from about 42 percent in 1965 to about 11 percent in 2021.

“Tobacco is incredibly important, and seeing decreases in cancer deaths, particularly lung cancer, is really driven by decreases in tobacco use,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, in a news briefing.

Cancers that tend to be more fatal, such as myeloma (a blood cancer), liver cancer and lung cancer, saw the largest survival gains, the American Cancer Society report found. For example, the five-year survival rate for lung cancer, which is the deadliest cancer in the U.S., increased from 15 percent in the mid-90s to 28 percent by 2021; for liver cancer, the survival rate rose from 7 percent in the mid-90s to 22 percent.

Survival rates for metastatic cancers have also improved, doubling for all cancers combined. This change, Dahut said, “is really driven by new therapies,” such as the development of immunotherapies and targeted therapies, which help to both cure and control the spread of cancer. “People are living with metastatic cancer for years and years now,” he said. 

The five-year survival rate is a common benchmark in cancer prognosis because cancers that don’t recur within five years rarely return.