Latest Estimates of Survival Rates of the 24 Most Common Cancers in Adolescent and Young Adult Americans

Purpose: A need to examine survival trends of individual cancers in older adolescents and young adults (AYAs) is prompted by overall survival trends that have indicated a lack of progress in survival improvement for AYAs compared with both younger and older cancer patients.

Patients And Methods: The most recent Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) data were used to ascertain survival trends of the 24 most frequent cancers in AYAs.

Results: Of the 20 types of cancers in 15- to 39-year-olds evaluable for survival rate trends, only eight had evidence for a statistically significant improvement in their age-adjusted 5-year survival rate since 1985. As of 2000-2007, of the 24 most common types of cancer in American AYAs, nine had an age-adjusted 5-year survival rate in excess of 80% and eight had a survival rate below 60%. In 19 of 21 cancers for which a comparison of survival by gender is feasible, AYA males had a worse survival rate than females. Of the 23 types of cancer that are classifiable as distant disease, 13 had 5-year survival rates of less than 30%.

Conclusion: While some progress has been made, the lack of improvement for some cancers with distant disease is disappointing. Increased survival of AYA cancer patients offers significant societal gains in terms of years of productivity compared to older adults. If the potential long-term economic impact of health in AYAs is considered, the need to improve the survival of AYAs with cancer is obvious.