Among Americans aged 65 years and older, the death rate from esophageal cancer decreased by 47% for black women and 38% for black men from 1990 to 2010 while increasing by 26% among white men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The death rate for white women aged 65 years and older went up about 8% over that same time period.
The age-adjusted death rate for black men took the largest absolute drop – from 62.3 deaths/100,000 population in 1990 to 38.7 in 2010. For black women, the rate dropped from 18.4/100,000 in 1990 to 9.8 in 2010. The corresponding increases took white men from 32.9 to 41.6 deaths/100,000 – with a peak of 42.9 in 2005 – and white women from 8.9 to 9.6, which was down from the peak of 10.4 in 2000, the CDC reported (MMWR 2013;62:559).
