American Cancer Society report finds breast cancer death rate continu...( ATLANTA Sept. 25 2007 A report fro...),Health

ATLANTA Sept. 25, 2007 A report from the American Cancer Society finds the breast cancer death rate in the United States continues to drop more than two percent per year, a trend that began in 1990 and is credited to progress in early detection and treatment. But the report says African American women and women of other racial and ethnic groups have benefited less than white women from the advances that have led to those gains, and that a recent drop in cancer incidence (the rate at which news cancers are diagnosed) is due in part to fewer women getting mammograms.

The findings are published in Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2007-2008 (available online September 25 at http://www.cancer.org/statistics). The report, published every two years since 1996, provides detailed analyses of breast cancer trends and presents information on known risk factors for the disease, factors that influence survival, the latest data on prevention, early detection, treatment, and ongoing and future research.

While many women live in fear of breast cancer, this report shows a woman today has a lower chance of dying from breast cancer than shes had in decades, said Harmon J. Eyre, M.D., chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. Unfortunately, not all women are benefiting at the same level. Perhaps most troubling is the striking divergence in long-term mortality trends seen between African American and white females that began in the early 1980s and that by 2004 had led to death rates being 36 percent higher in African American women.

Other highlights of Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2007-2008 include:

• In 2007, 178,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected among women. Excluding cancers of the skin, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women, accounting for more than one in four cancers diagnosed in U.S women.

• In 2004 (the late
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