Over 2 Million Americans Projected to Get Cancer Diagnosis This Year

The American Cancer Society projected approximately 2 million new cancer diagnoses and 618,000 new cancer deaths in the U.S. in 2025, with a cancer burden increasingly borne by younger populations, particularly women.

While cancer continues to be a leading cause of death overall in the U.S., and the leading cause among persons under the age of 85, “there is really some good news here,” said William Dahut, MD, chief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, during a press briefing. “There is a decrease in cancer mortality.”

Specifically, due to smoking reductions, earlier detection of some cancers, and improvements in treatment, there was a 34% drop in the cancer death rate from 1991 through 2022. This translated to about 3 million fewer cancer deaths in men and about 1.44 million fewer deaths in women than if mortality had remained at its peak, according to the society’s annual cancer statistics report, led by Rebecca Siegel, MPH, of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, and published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

However, Siegel and colleagues noted that progress is lagging in cancer prevention, as incidence rates continue to increase for several cancers, including melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and pancreatic cancer.

They also said disparities in cancer incidence and mortality continue to be concerning, with native Americans bearing the highest cancer mortality, including rates double to triple those in white people for kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancer, while Black people have a twofold higher mortality than white people for prostate, stomach, and uterine corpus cancers.

“And there are some things that we really need to be more conscious of,” Dahut added. “Particularly, that is the change in the risks that are gender based, and the continued shift [in cancer risk] to younger populations.”

Although overall cancer incidence has generally declined in men, it has risen in women, with the result that the male-to-female rate ratio has narrowed from a peak of 1.6 in 1992 to 1.1 in 2021. Moreover, rates in women ages 50 to 64 years surpass those in men (832.5 vs 830.6 per 100,000), and younger women (younger than 50 years) have an 82% higher incidence rate than males in the same age group (141.1 vs 77.4 per 100,000), up from 51% in 2002.

“This is driven largely by breast cancer, but we also see it in thyroid cancer, although thyroid cancer incidence has been falling over time,” Dahut noted.

On the other hand, while incidence rates in men under the age of 50 are increasing for four leading cancers (colorectal, testicular, kidney, and leukemia), those trends have been offset by declines in cancers such as melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and prostate cancer.

“The other thing is we are seeing a change in the time of cancer diagnosis,” Dahut said. “Age remains the greatest risk factor for cancer overall, and that hasn’t changed, but we are seeing some shifting.”

The report found that adults 65 and older actually accounted for just 59% of new cancer diagnoses in 2021 — a decrease from 61% in 1995 — despite the fact that this age group grew in proportion to the general population from 13% to 17%. At the same time, the proportion of adults ages 50 to 64 years increased in the cancer population from 25% to 29%, and from 13% to 19% in the general population.

People younger than 50 years were the only group to experience an increase in cancer incidence from 1995 through 2021. However, the drop in population size (from 74% to 64%) meant this group represented just 12% of cancer diagnoses in 2021 compared with 15% in 1995.

The most common cancers that will be diagnosed in men in 2025 are expected to be prostate, lung, and colorectal cancers, accounting for 48% of incident cases, with prostate cancer accounting for 30%. In women, breast, lung, and colorectal cancer will account for 51% of new diagnoses, with breast cancer accounting for 32%.

Lung Cancer in Women and Nonsmokers

One of the most striking takeaways from the report, Dahut said, is the rate at which women have overtaken men regarding lung cancer incidence.

The estimated 142,730 lung cancer deaths in 2025 will be more than those from colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer combined. “And, for the first time, if you are a woman under the age of 65 you have a greater chance of developing lung cancer than men do,” Dahut said. “And this is really a transformative change if you think of lung cancer over time.”

Lung cancer is primarily driven by smoking — an activity men took up earlier and in larger numbers than women. While lung cancer incidence declined in the decade between 2012 and 2021 by 3% per year in men, that rate of decline was much lower in women (1.4% per year). Now, the lung cancer incidence rate in women has surpassed that of men (15.7 vs 15.4 per 100,000) among people younger than 65.

According to the report, the downturn in lung cancer incidence began later and remains slower in men because women took up smoking in large numbers later than men, and were slower to quit, with upticks in smoking prevalence in some generations born after 1965.

Dahut also noted that a substantial percentage of lung cancer diagnoses are driven by nonsmokers.

“Overall, in this country, nonsmoking lung cancer by itself would be the eighth leading cause of cancer mortality, and worldwide the fifth leading, so thinking about lung cancer in nonsmokers is something that we and others are focusing on more over time,” he said.

As for other findings of interest, Dahut pointed out that pancreatic cancer incidence and mortality continues to grow. “The numbers are significantly higher than we saw a century ago,” he observed. “It is such a lethal cancer incidence and mortality numbers are tied very closely together. It is now the third leading cause of cancer mortality and potentially over time that could go up even higher, it is a difficult cancer to treat and a difficult cancer to find earlier on.”

Regarding cervical cancer, rates in women ages 30 to 44 years have increased from 12.7% in 2013 to 14.1% in 2021, after years of decline. This contrasts with rates in women between the ages of 20 to 24 — the first to be exposed to the HPV vaccine — a group that saw rates drop by 6%.