In 1975, 3 percent of Americans with pancreatic cancer were alive five years after diagnosis. Today it is 13 percent. That is better, and it is still the kind of number that makes oncologists wince.
The figures come from the American Cancer Society’s 2025 Cancer Facts and Figures report, which tracks five-year relative survival from 1975 to 2020. For all cancers combined, survival rose from 49 percent to 69 percent over those 50 years. The overall number hides a lot.
Where the gains came from
Several blood cancers changed the most. Leukemia survival went from 34 percent to 67 percent. Myeloma went from 25 percent to 61 percent, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma from 47 percent to 74 percent. Liver cancer climbed from 3 percent to 22 percent. Lung cancer, still the leading cause of cancer death, moved from 12 percent to 27 percent.
The report credits targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and detection that catches cases earlier than anything available in the 1970s.
Where survival slipped
Three cancers went the wrong way. Larynx cancer survival fell from 66 percent to 62 percent. Uterine corpus cancer dropped from 87 percent to 81 percent, and cervical cancer from 69 percent to 67 percent. All three have established screening or early detection methods, which makes the decline harder to explain.
The racial gap
In 1975, Black patients had a five-year survival rate of 39 percent across all cancers, against 50 percent for white patients. By 2020 the figures were 65 percent and 70 percent. The gap shrank from 11 points to 5.
Breast cancer tells a less tidy story. Survival for Black women rose from 62 percent to 84 percent, and for white women from 76 to 93 percent. Both groups improved a great deal, yet the distance between them is still 9 points. In ovarian cancer, Black women had higher survival than white women in 1975. They no longer do.
The hardest cancers
Pancreatic cancer at 13 percent, liver cancer at 22 percent and esophageal cancer at 22 percent trail the rest. The source describing the data puts part of the blame on biology and part on late-stage detection, which leaves little for treatment to work with.
Patients should talk to their physician about what these figures mean for their own situation.
