Article
The study, published in the journal Cancer found that increasing screening rates to 80% by 2018 would reduce projected colorectal cancer incidence rates by 17% and mortality rates by 19% during short-term follow-up, and by 22% and 33%, respectively, during extended follow-up. Those reductions would amount to a total of 277,000 averted new cancers and 203,000 averted colorectal cancer deaths from 2013 through 2030.
Increasing colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates to 80% by 2018 would prevent an additional 21,000 colorectal cancer deaths per year by 2030, according to a new study. The study is the first to estimate the public health benefits of increasing screening rates to “
,” a recent initiative from the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable, a national coalition of public, private, and voluntary organizations, to aim for screening rates of 80% in the United States by 2018. The study is co-authored by American Cancer Society epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal and
, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
CRC (commonly called colon cancer) is the third leading cause of cancer death in both men and women in the United States, and the second leading cause for both sexes combined. An estimated 132,700 new cases and 49,700 deaths are expected in 2015 in the U.S. Data from the past decade show that both incidence and mortality from colon cancer are decreasing at rate of about 3% per year, largely due to the increased use of screening. Still, fewer than 6 in 10 U.S. adults (58%) aged 50 to 75 years had received guideline-recommended testing in 2013.
Read the complete press release by the American Cancer Society: