The annual Iowa Cancer Registry is being released by researchers at the University of Iowa, detailing projections for the year ahead on cancer deaths — and survival rates. U-of-I epidemiology professor Doctor Charles Lynch, the registry’s medical director, says they predict there will be 16-thousand new cancers diagnosed this year in Iowans, about five cases per thousand Iowans. Breast cancer will be the most common type diagnosed in women, he says, with prostate cancer being number-one in men.
Lynch says they expect 63-hundred cancer deaths among Iowans this year, half and half between men and women, accounting for about 23-percent of all deaths in the state. While the numbers of smokers is gradually declining, Lynch says cigarettes are still killing Iowans by the thousands. Lynch says lung cancer will be the most common cause of cancer deaths this year for both men and women and will account for three of every ten cancer deaths. He say lung cancer is solidly the number-one cancer killer in Iowa.
Lynch says more Iowans are surviving cancer when it’s found early. Lynch says cancer mortality rates are dropping, with a decline of about four-percent since the mid 1990s, with more of a decline in cancers for which screening programs are in place, namely breast and colorectal cancer. He says the number of lung cancer cases is slowly dropping for Iowa men, but not in women.