CDC: 1 in 20 Americans Is a Cancer Survivor

March 10, 2011 — -- By the third grade, Dan Pardi of Norwood, Mass., could say he'd collected more than 100,000 baseball cards. And that he'd survived cancer.

"At 7, you don't know what's going on," said Pardi, who'd been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, one of the most common forms of childhood cancer. "At that age, you think that every kid goes through it."

Now 23, Pardi said his college friends couldn't believe he'd ever had cancer -- and survived. "When I went to college, I told my friends I'd had childhood cancer and people thought, really? You don't look it," said Pardi, who was treated at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "I didn't know there was a look to cancer."

Now, just like Pardi, more people can call themselves cancer survivors. Nearly one in 20 Americans over the age of 20 is a cancer survivor, thanks to advances in early detection and treatment, according to a new analysis by the National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It's really quite staggering, and it's quite wonderful," said Dr. Stephen Edge, medical director of the breast center at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.

The CDC defines a cancer survivor as anyone at any age who has ever been diagnosed with any form of cancer and may have undergone treatment during or before 2007. By this criteria, nearly 12 million Americans could call themselves cancer survivors in 2007, up from 10 million survivors in 2001, according to the report. Fifty-four percent of survivors are women, and close to 46 percent are men.

But an increase in the number of cancer survivors does not necessarily mean that there are a higher number of new diagnoses of cancer, said Edge.

"If incidence stays the same and we have better treatment, then of course prevalence would go up," he said. "But that's nothing to worry about. It just means survival for a longer period of time."

Breast, prostate and colorectal cancer are among the most common cancers, accounting for nearly half of all cancer diagnoses. And nearly half of all survivors of every type of cancer were diagnosed with the disease as adults.

Since children are not screened for cancer, the increase in childhood cancer survivorship stems from early treatment and advances in treatment. Today, 75 percent to 80 percent of children with any form of cancer can expect to survive.

"The majority are now surviving, whereas a decade or so ago they didn't," said Linda Jacobs, a registered nurse and director at the Livestrong Survivorship Center of Excellence and Living Well After Cancer program at the the University of Pennsylvania. "That can be said for many cancers at any age, depending on the type."