"While many women live in fear of breast cancer, this report shows a woman today has a lower chance of dying from breast cancer than she's had in decades," said Harmon J. Eyre, M.D., chief medical officer of the ACS.
Beginning in 1990 and continuing through 2007, the death rate for breast cancer has dropped at least two percent a year, a trend that the ACS attributes predominantly to early detection and treatment. The decline was even larger among younger age groups.
Notably, white women are reaping the benefits more than women of other racial and ethnic groups. From 1995-2004, female breast cancer death rates declined by 2.4 percent per year in whites and Hispanics/Latinas, 1.6 percent per year in African Americans, and remained unchanged among Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders and American Indians/Alaska Natives.
The findings are published in Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2007-2008, which also highlights factors that may help reduce a woman's chances of developing breast cancer. Those include exercise, eating a healthy diet and refraining from drinking two or more alcoholic beverages a day.
In 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), approximately 2.4 million women living in the U.S. had a history of breast cancer. The illness is expected to kill approximately 40,000 women in 2007, making it the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in women, behind lung cancer. The number one cancer diagnosed in American women is skin cancer, which takes far fewer lives annually.
