New figures released today from the leading charity Cancer Research UK show that cancer is the biggest cause of premature deaths in the UK. The new analysis, based on 2009 registers, shows cancer is responsible for killing 40% of men and women in the UK who die prematurely between the ages of 25 and 74.

More people in the UK die early from cancer than any other disease, including heart disease and AIDS and also more than from other causes such as road accidents, suicide and murder, says the charity.

However, the good news is there are also more people surviving cancer today than ever before, which the charity puts down to new research finding better treatments.

Although the number of people who develop cancer has gone up, the number that die from the disease has come down dramatically over the last four decades.

As ways of screening and diagnosing cancer earlier improve, the greater the chances of successful treatment, so we can expect to see survival rates going up, the charity says in a press release issued today.

The new statistics relate to deaths from cancer registered in 2009, the latest year for which UK mortality data is available. The new analysis appears on the charity’s website and currently shows a mix of 2008 and 2009 data, but this will gradually fill up with 2009 data as it becomes available.

In 2009, there were 156,090 deaths from cancer in the UK.

Across all ages from 1 to 85 years old, this is far in excess of the other two main killer diseases in the UK: it is 73,000 more deaths than those caused by coronoary heart disease and about 78,000 more than those caused by respiratory diseases.

Of the cancers, lung cancer kills the most people. In 2009 it killed around 35,000 people in the UK. The next biggest is bowel cancer, this killed around 16,000 people in the UK in 2009, with breast cancer not far behind, causing 11,700 UK deaths in 2009 and then prostate cancer (10,300 in 2009).

Cancers of the lung, bowel, breast and prostate together account for 47% of all cancer deaths.

The top ten most common causes of cancer death among men in the UK in 2009 were cancers of: lung, prostate, colorectum, oesophagus, pancreas, bladder, stomach, leukemia, non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, and kidney.

Among women they were: lung, breast, colorectum, ovary, pancreas, oesophagus, non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, leukemia, stomach, and uterus.

The lowest cancer survival rates are still among people who develop pancreatic and lung cancers. For these diseases in the UK, the five year survival rates are around 4% for pancreatic and 7% for lung cancer.

The charity urges us to interpret survival rates with caution:

“They are not necessarily good indicators for a prognosis for individual cancer patients due to the large diversity of outcomes for patients in different circumstances, such as age of the patient and stage of the disease.”

Also, in this latest analysis, the survival rates published on the charity webiste are for 2000-2001 and so do not include more recent advances in the treatment of any particular cancer.

Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, says:

“We have had great success in reducing the death rate from many types of cancer in the last decade. But far too many people are still dying from this devastating disease and we clearly have much more work to do.”

Dr Julie Sharp, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK, affirms that in the last 40 years we have seen huge improvements in survival rates for cancer but says we must also not lose sight of the progress still to be made, “these figures serve as a reminder of the huge amount of work still left to do”.

She calls for a redoubling of efforts to press on with research to improve diagnosis and treatment, so that cancer becomes “a disease people live with rather than die from”. She also lauds the public’s generosity and urges for continued support:

“It is entirely due to the amazing generosity of the public that we are able to support the work of more than 4,000 dedicated doctors, nurses and scientists who continue to unlock the secrets of a disease that affects us all. As more and more people get cancer and the economy tightens, we need the public’s support now more than ever.”

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD