The 10 deadliest Cancers and why there's no cure

Livescience

Any kind of cancer is awful. Here is information about the 10 deadliest cancers.

Jump to:

The dread and fear that can come with a cancer diagnosis have their roots in its killer nature: Cancer is the second most common cause of death in Americans after heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even when diagnosed early and attacked with the latest treatments, cancer still has the power to kill. 

Worldwide, the three cancers that killed the most people in 2020 were lung cancer (1.80 million deaths), colorectal cancer (935,000 deaths) and liver cancer (830,000 deaths). But those aren’t the deadliest cancers, according to Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society (ACS). 

The number of people a cancer kills each year depends on two factors: how many people have it (cancer incidence) and what percentage of people diagnosed with the cancer survive it (survival), Siegel explained. The deadliest cancers are those with the lowest survival. 

Cancer researchers determine survival with a measure called the 5-year relative survival. This is the percentage of people who are expected to survive the effects of a given cancer, excluding risks from other possible causes of death, for five years past a diagnosis, according to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), a National Cancer Institute (NCI) initiative that collects, compiles, analyzes and reports data and statistics on cancer cases nationwide.

Here’s a look at the 10 deadliest cancers in the United States based on SEER 5-year relative survival data for cases diagnosed between 2011 and 2017. 

1. Pancreatic cancer, 5-year relative survival: 10.8%

Pancreatic cancer begins in the tissues of the pancreas, which aids digestion. Digestive system cancers in general are quite deadly, with fewer than half of patients surviving five years, according to SEER data, and pancreatic cancer is the deadliest of the bunch. Most pancreatic cancers are exocrine cancers, which means the cancer arises in the cells that make digestive enzymes. Less commonly, cancers arise in the pancreas’s endocrine cells, which make hormones such as insulin; these are called pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), or islet cell tumors, according to the ACS. NETs make up 2% of pancreatic cancers and have a much better prognosis, according to the ACS…