Cancer Still Leading Cause of Death for Hispanics
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WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States overall, but a new report finds that cancer remains the number one killer of U.S. Hispanics.
Hispanics now make up over 17 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In a new report, the American Cancer Society predicts that nearly 126,000 new cancers will be diagnosed among Hispanics this year and an estimated 38,000 will die from the disease.
Although overall cancer rates are 20 percent lower among Hispanics compared with whites and cancer death rates are 30 percent lower, cancer is still the biggest killer among Hispanics, said cancer society epidemiologist Kim Miller, one of the authors of the report.
"The good news is that the rates for the four most common cancers -- prostate, breast, lung and colon -- are lower in Hispanics than in whites," she said.
In addition, cancer rates among Hispanics are dropping 2.4 percent per year in men and 0.5 percent per year in women, which mirrors trends among whites, Miller said.
The report was published Sept. 16 in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
According to the report, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among Hispanic men. This year, liver cancer will surpass colon cancer as the second leading cause of cancer deaths among Hispanic men.
Liver cancer deaths among Hispanic men and women are about double those among white men and women, the researchers found.
Among Hispanic women, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death at 16 percent of all cancer deaths, followed by lung and colon cancers, the findings showed.
Miller said that lung cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women overall. However, since Hispanic women have traditionally smoked less, lung cancer deaths are 70 percent lower among Hispanic women than among white women. In 2014, 8 percent of Hispanic women smoked cigarettes, compared with 17 percent of white women, she said.