Cancer accounts for more than a quarter of deaths around the world and in the United States.  Worldwide, in 2013, cancer killed over 8 million people; it has moved from the third leading cause of death in 1990 to the second leading cause of death in 2013, following heart disease.  In the US, during 2013, cancer was responsible for 584,881 deaths, second only to heart disease at 611,105 deaths.  More statistics are shown on this page.  Read more about cancer, from cancer.gov.

 

REFERENCES

  1. Global Burden of Disease Cancer C, Fitzmaurice C, Dicker D, Pain A, Hamavid H, Moradi-Lakeh M, MacIntyre MF, Allen C, Hansen G, Woodbrook R, et al. The Global Burden of Cancer 2013. JAMA oncology 2015;1(4):505-27. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.0735.
  2. Jones DS, Podolsky SH, Greene JA. The burden of disease and the changing task of medicine. N Engl J Med 2012;366(25):2333-8. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1113569.
  3. Siegel RL, Miller KD, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2016. CA Cancer J Clin 2016;66(1):7-30. doi: 10.3322/caac.21332.
  4. Siegel RL, Miller KD, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2015. CA Cancer J Clin 2015;65(1):5-29. doi: 10.3322/caac.21254.
  5. Yau N. Causes of Death. 2016. http://flowingdata.com/2016/01/05/causes-of-death/. Accessed: January 2016.