Cancer Statistics
This year, it was estimated that there were 1.66 million new cases of cancer in the U.S. It is also the second most common cause of death in the U.S. Almost 25% of all deaths are related to cancer. There are a lot of people getting cancer, and a lot of people not surviving it unfortunately. Figure 1 is a breakdown of estimated new cancer cases in the U.S. The highest percentages of cancer are gender specific, for example, prostate and breast, followed by lung cancer and the other cancers after that. There is a lot of information for anyone who wants to look at the statistics for cancer. If you are not familiar, you can always go to the ACS, American Cancer Society, and they have a lengthy presentation about cancer.
Figure 1. Estimated New Cancer Cases in the US in 2013.
Cost of Cancer
The cost of cancer is something very fascinating from a rehab perspective. The direct medical costs of cancer estimated in 2009 are $93 billion, and the indirect morbidity costs are at almost $19 billion. I think a lot of that is the cost of loss of productivity second to morbidity. That is really where we come in. As rehab professionals, we are the people who can help the cancer survivors get back to work and back to the life they need. That will limit those morbidity costs. There is also a very large cost to mortality and loss of productivity due to mortality. There was a 2000 study in the Oncologist that looked at 177 patients who were employed. Of those 177, 75% of them changed their employment status as a result of their cancer-related fatigue because cancer-related fatigue does have such a significant impact on the daily lives of people, they are not able to hold the jobs that they once were.
