HJAR Mar/Apr 2023

54 MAR / APR 2023 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS DIALOGUE COLUMN ONCOLOGY HowAdvanced Imaging is Changing Everything in Cancer Care, And HowWe Can Use It to Change Even More THE FUTURE IS CLEAR IN the medical community, cancer is always top of mind. It affects one in three individuals and is the second-leading cause of death in this country (heart disease being the undis- puted first, of course). Cancer claims about 1,670 lives each day, with lung cancer being far and away responsible for the greatest per- centage of those deaths. Thankfully, there is some positive cancer news to share, and it has more to do with us than you might think. Declining cancer risk The risk of dying from cancer is decreasing in the United States, falling an incredible 32% from 1991 to 2019. That translates to nearly 3.5 million fewer cancer deaths, including lung cancer deaths, in just a few decades. We can attribute much of this happy decline to fewer people smoking. The American Cancer Society also points to an increase in the percentage of lung cancer patients who are living longer after diagnosis, due in part to more people being diagnosed at earlier stages. Localized-stage disease diagnosis rose by 4.5% annually from 2014 to 2018, coupled with sharp declines in late-stage diagnoses, resulting in an overall increase in three-year survival rates. To put those results in terms of lives, 21 out of 100 people diagnosed with lung cancer were living three years after their diagnosis