{"entity":{"id":"mortality","kind":"term","name":"Mortality","aka":["mortality rate","mortality rates","cancer mortality","cancer deaths","deaths per 100,000","death rate","death rates","cancer-specific mortality","disease-specific mortality","all-cause mortality","case fatality","mortality benefit","mortality reduction","reduce mortality","reduces mortality","fatal","cancer death"],"tldr":"The number of deaths from a disease in a population per year. Cancer mortality has fallen about a third since 1991 in the US, mostly from less smoking, earlier detection and better treatment.","summary":"Mortality rates are the hardest measure of progress, because they are immune to the biases that inflate incidence and survival statistics: finding more harmless cancers raises incidence and apparent survival but does not reduce deaths. A screening test is only proven if it lowers disease-specific mortality in a randomised trial, as mammography, colonoscopy and low-dose CT for smokers have and PSA screening only marginally has; 'stage shift' is a surrogate for this. Cancer is now the leading cause of death in many high-income countries as heart disease declines, and global cancer deaths are rising with ageing populations even as age-adjusted rates fall.","asOf":"2026-09-09","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate"}],"tags":[],"related":["incidence-vs-prevalence","screening","stage-shift","os","prognosis","cancer-registries-surveillance"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"category":"Clinic basics"},"route":"/terms/mortality/","neighbours":{"term":[{"id":"incidence-vs-prevalence","kind":"term","name":"Incidence versus prevalence","route":"/terms/incidence-vs-prevalence/"},{"id":"os","kind":"term","name":"Overall survival 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