Ovarian stats looking up

Although none of us want to hear about the possibility of deaths caused by cancers, I was watching a health show this afternoon and they asked the audience what they thought the top cancer killer was among women.

Everyone in the poll had different thoughts but when the statics came to life... ovarian cancer was NOT even in the top three. Number one was however, lung cancer, then came breast and next rectal colon cancer.

So for all of us who have had ovarian cancer, We are making a difference and things are not as glum as they used to be. We will beat this monster!!

Rosalie

There is a detailed statistics document available for free download at the Amercian Cancer Society web site (www.cancer.org). From the home page, click on "Statistics" and then you'll see a page that has the 2003 document. From there, click on "download." It's a 52-page .pdf file, so it takes a while for each page to load if you're online via a land line.

The interesting thing to me about this document was the number of new cases diagnosed by state and by year, as well as the number of deaths attributed to each cancer type.

I had been wondering whether more women than men got cancer. But it seems that 1 in 2 men get cancer, whereas 1 in 3 women get cancer. Men had a much higher rate of lung cancer than women, but I believe lung cancer was listed as the top killer for women. The document also has charts that plot out mortality rates by gender *and* by cancer type.

The document is free, and it was very interesting to me.

I believe the ACS said that they're going to try to incorporate "age" information starting next year. This will be helpful to the many people dianosed with cancer who don't understand if the stats provided are relevant for their age group (e.g., someone in the 20-30 age bracket vs. someone in the 70-80 age bracket).