The U.S. has reached a watershed moment in the fight against cancer: Seven in 10 people now survive five years or more after diagnosis, according to the latest annual report from the American Cancer Society. [NBC News & American Cancer Society] 

That’s a big improvement since the 1970s, when only half of those diagnosed lived at least five years. In the mid-1990s, the rate was 63%.

The 70% figure is based on diagnoses from 2015 to 2021. The findings were published Tuesday in the American Cancer Society’s medical journal, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

Five years is the most common benchmark for measuring cancer survival, since the risk of certain cancers’ recurring declines significantly if the cancers haven’t come back within that time.

Thanks to improved treatment options over the last decade, many cancers have gone from death sentences to chronic diseases, according to the report’s lead author, Rebecca Siegel, the American Cancer Society’s senior scientific director of surveillance research.

“It takes decades for research to understand and develop these more effective treatments, and now we’re seeing the fruits of those investments,” Siegel said.

The report estimates that 4.8 million cancer deaths were prevented from 1991 to 2023, largely because of better treatments, earlier detection methods and reductions in smoking.

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