As the cancer mortality rate has declined in recent years, the number of cancer survivors has increased substantially, according to a National Cancer Institute report.
Between 1992 and 2012, the overall cancer death rate fell by about 22 percent and the number of people living beyond a cancer diagnosis in the United States doubled from roughly 7 million to 14 million.
That number is expected to hit 18 million by 2022, accounting for approximately 5 percent of the population, according to the report.
While the reduced cancer mortality rate also applies to some common cancers such as lung, breast, colon/rectum and prostate, the rate of death from some forms of cancer has actually increased. The liver cancer mortality rate, for example, has increased by 20 percent from 2001 and 2010.
Given statistics like that, there is still a lot of work to be done. Between 2012 and 2025, the number of cancer diagnoses is estimated to increase by 31 percent — from 1.6 million to 2.1 million — and the estimated cancer mortality will increase even faster, by 37 percent, from 620,000 to 850,000.
For more information on cancer mortality rates, read the full NCI report here.