From the National Cancer Institute:
April 21, 2020, by NCI Staff
The number of people who die each year from the skin cancer melanoma has dramatically decreased in recent years, results from a new study show.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, death rates from melanoma showed a consistent rise. But from 2013 to 2016, the new study found, the number of deaths from melanoma among whites fell by about 18% overall. The sharpest decline was seen in white men aged 50 or older.
“This roughly 5% drop per year over 4 years is the largest drop ever seen over such a short period, for any kind of cancer,” said Allan Geller, M.P.H., R.N., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who co-led the study.
The decline likely was due, in large part, to a wave of new treatments, including targeted therapies and immunotherapy, approved for advanced melanoma over the last decade, the authors explained in a study published March 19 in the American Journal of Public Health.
And treatments for melanoma have only continued to improve over the last several years, said Anthony Olszanski, M.D., codirector of the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, who was not involved with the study.
“I think that if we take another look at the data in a few years, we're going to see an even bigger improvement than we saw in this study,” Dr. Olszanski added
The number of people who die each year from the skin cancer melanoma has dramatically decreased in recent years, results from a new study show.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, death rates from melanoma showed a consistent rise. But from 2013 to 2016, the new study found, the number of deaths from melanoma among whites fell by about 18% overall. The sharpest decline was seen in white men aged 50 or older.
“This roughly 5% drop per year over 4 years is the largest drop ever seen over such a short period, for any kind of cancer,” said Allan Geller, M.P.H., R.N., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who co-led the study.
The decline likely was due, in large part, to a wave of new treatments, including targeted therapies and immunotherapy, approved for advanced melanoma over the last decade, the authors explained in a study published March 19 in the American Journal of Public Health.
And treatments for melanoma have only continued to improve over the last several years, said Anthony Olszanski, M.D., codirector of the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, who was not involved with the study.
“I think that if we take another look at the data in a few years, we're going to see an even bigger improvement than we saw in this study,” Dr. Olszanski added
