Cancer Facts & Figures 2016

Basic Cancer Facts

What Is Cancer?

Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by the uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells. If the spread is not controlled, it can result in death. Cancer is caused by external factors, such as tobacco, infectious organisms, and an unhealthy diet, and internal factors, such as inherited genetic mutations, hormones, and immune conditions. These factors may act together or in sequence to cause cancer. Ten or more years often pass between exposure to external factors and detectable cancer. Treatments include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, immune therapy, and targeted therapy (drugs that specifically interfere with cancer cell growth a higher risk of cancer. Cancer researchers use the word “risk” in different ways, most commonly expressing risk as lifetime risk or relative risk. Lifetime risk refers to the probability that an individual will develop or die from cancer over the course of a lifetime. In the US, the lifetime risk of developing cancer is higher in men (slightly less than 1 in 2) than for women (a little more than 1 in 3). These probabilities are estimated based on the overall experience of the general population and may overestimate or underestimate individual risk because of differences in exposures (e.g., smoking), family history, and/or genetic susceptibility. 

Relative risk is a measure of the strength of the relationship between a risk factor and cancer. It compares the risk of developing cancer in people with a certain exposure or trait to the risk in people who do not have this characteristic. For example, men and women who smoke are about 25 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers, so their relative risk is 25. Most relative risks are not this large. For example, women who have one first-degree relative (mother, sister, or daughter) with a history of breast cancer are about twice as likely to develop breast cancer as women who do not have this family history; in other words, their relative risk is about 2. For most types of cancer, risk is higher with a family history of the disease. It is now thought that many familial cancers arise not exclusively from genetic makeup, but from the interplay between common gene variations and lifestyle and environmental risk factors. Only a small proportion of cancers are strongly hereditary, in that an inherited genetic alteration confers a very high risk.