U.S. cancer diagnoses will jump 45 percent by 2030

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The number of new cancer cases diagnosed each year will jump 45 percent in the next two decades to 2.3 million up from 1.6 million in 2010, affecting many more older adults and minorities, U.S. researchers predicted on Wednesday.

Using demographic trends, researchers at the University of Texas project a 67 percent increase in the number of adults 65 and older will be diagnosed with cancer in 2030, rising to 1.6 million in 2030 from 1 million in 2010.

And they foresee a doubling in the number of non-whites who will be diagnosed with cancer by then, rising to 660,000 cases a year from 330,000.

The data assume that rates of cancer would remain about the same. "This is basically saying how will our population changes impact the number of people getting cancer," Dr. Ben Smith of the university's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said in a telephone interview.

"In 2030, 70 percent of all cancers will be diagnosed in the elderly and 28 percent in minorities, and the number of older adults diagnosed with cancer will be the same as the total number of Americans diagnosed with cancer in 2010," he said.

Smith said that the number and types of cancers expected to increase -- such as liver, stomach and pancreas -- are especially deadly.

"Currently, we don't have the health care infrastructure to be able to accommodate the expected surge in cancer diagnoses," Smith, whose findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, said in a telephone interview.

He pointed to data from the American Society of Clinical Oncology that suggests 40 percent of cancer specialists in the United States are 55 and older and many will retire in the next decade or so.