Childhood Cancer Statistics

Cancer is the leading cause of disease-related deaths in children under the age of 20. Every year, about 12,400 children and teens under the age of 20 are diagnosed with cancer, and approximately 2,300 children die.
Survival rates for childhood cancer have risen sharply over the past 20 years. In the United States, more than 75 percent of children with cancer are now alive five years after diagnosis, compared with about 60 percent in the mid-1970s. Much of this dramatic improvement is due to the development of improved therapies at children's cancer centers, where the majority of children with cancer have their treatment.

However, there are a number of childhood cancer-related statistics that are troubling.

These statistics include:

Brain cancers and other tumors in children’s nervous systems rose by more than 25%
between 1973 and 1996. Over the past 20 years, there has been some increase in the incidence of children diagnosed with all forms of invasive cancer; from 11.4 cases per 100,000 children in 1975 to 15.2 per 100,000 children in 1998
Leukemia, which is the most common childhood cancer, increased by more than15% over the past 20 years. Most of the increase in leukemia rates in the past 20 years has been in a kind of cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia or ALL.
A recent study in the American Journal of Public Health reported an association between household chemicals and ALL. In the study, the researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the University of Minnesota found children were more likely to develop ALL if they lived in households where family hobbies involved the use of solvents (such as refinishing furniture, or building models). They were also more likely to develop ALL if more than 4 rooms in the house had been painted while their mothers were pregnant. According to the Children’s Cancer Group Epidemiology Program, a network of pediatric epidemiologists, children are 5 to 6 times more likely to develop leukemia and brain cancer if their families use pesticides at home.

*Information compiled from both Cancer.gov, the Web site of the National Cancer
Institute, and cancer.org, the Web site of the American Cancer Society