Last week, the Breast Screening After Radiotherapy (BARD) project team won the ‘Outstanding Benefit to Society through Research’ award at the Manchester University Making A Difference Awards 2023.

BARD is one of the NDRS partnerships, working in collaboration with Manchester University and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. NDRS data is used to identify women at increased risk of developing breast cancer and make sure they are offered enhanced breast cancer screening. BARD has changed national policy and clinical practice and is the means by which women across England are now automatically offered screening at the right time improving patient access, outcomes, and experience.

A huge congratulations to Professor John Radford, Dr Sacha Howell, Professor Richard Cowan, Dr Joanna Williams and Elsita Payne and the rest of the BARD team. This is wonderful example of the value of NDRS data and expertise.

You can find out more and watch a great short video on the official awards website.

May is bladder cancer awareness month. At NDRS we wanted to use this opportunity to tell you about the Get Data Out (GDO) programme which publishes in-depth, anonymous data about cancer to support research

The GDO programme publishes detailed statistics on Bladder, Urethra, Renal Pelvis and Ureter. Statistics are presented on small groups of patients, defined both by characteristics of the patients (such as their age and sex) and by features of their tumours (such as the stage or location). The GDO groups present information on incidence, treatment, routes to diagnosis and survival for all these groups. For bladder cancer, groups are defined by the behaviour of the tumour, whether the tumour is urothelial or not, whether the tumour is muscle invasive or not, and for early stage tumours the grade of the tumour. This was developed by working with clinicians and charities. The full information and tree diagram can be found on our website.

Earlier this month, Sarah Stevens (NDRS Associate Director) and Steven Hardy (NDRS Head of Genomics and Rare Disease) participated in the first UK-Thailand Genomics Steering Committee meeting which brought together key stakeholders from both nations following the recent signing of a memorandum of understanding between UK and Thailand. The aim of this landmark partnership is to boost genomics expertise and explore mutual benefits for improving patient outcomes. Sarah and Steven presented on our approach to national disease registration and the importance of genomic data across cancer, congenital anomalies and rare diseases.

A paper on the impact of the second COVID-19 wave on people with rare autoimmune rheumatic disease was published in Rheumatology by the RECORDER collaboration. The paper showed that, taking age and sex into account, death following COVID-19 was 2.7x more common in people with rare autoimmune rheumatic disease compared to the general population. However, there was no evidence of an increase in deaths from other causes.

We updated our Routes to Diagnosis dashboard the CancerData website, bringing together the old outputs in to one. This contains previously published 2006-2018 data in an interactive display, with cuts of incidence data by a selection of cancer sites, time periods and demographics as well as cuts of data by stage and sub-Route with more granular detail on emergency presentations. The tool allows users to download all the data used in it and has links to historical publications. 

The treatment dashboard, presenting the percentage of tumours receiving chemotherapy, radiotherapy and/or a surgical tumour resection in England, has been updated to include 2020 cancer diagnoses. The tool shows the variation in treatment rates by tumour and patient characteristics, including cancer site, year of diagnosis, stage at diagnosis, age, gender, socio-economic deprivation, ethnicity, and comorbidity at diagnosis, and Cancer Alliance. Please find the methodology detailed in the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

The genomics team in NDRS collaborated on a study of sebaceous carcinoma that has been published in the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. Sebaceous carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer, can be a presenting feature of Muir Torre Syndrome or Lynch Syndrome, and thus may reveal a predisposition to other associated cancers. Currently, there is little mismatch repair (MMR) screening among patients with sebaceous carcinoma due to sparsity in evidence to support it.

In this national study of sebaceous carcinoma with genetic testing data and cancer diagnoses, it was found that one third of sebaceous carcinoma cases tested had MMR deficiency, and that cancer risk among these patients is high. These findings provide the necessary data to recommend that all patients with sebaceous carcinoma tumours should be offered MMR screening.

A new study using cancer registry data and cardiovascular audit data across England has found differences in the care and management of heart failure for people who have cancer compared to people who don't have cancer. 

 

The research, published in The European Heart Journal (Acute Cardiovascular Care), analysed more than two hundred thousand (n=221,953) people in England who presented to hospital with heart failure. Of these, more than 1 in 20 (5.8%) had a diagnosis of breast, prostate, colorectal or lung cancer in the previous 10 years. 

 

The study found that people with cancer who were admitted with heart failure were less likely to be seen by a cardiologist and were also less likely to be prescribed guidance-recommended medication used to treat heart failure (ACE inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers) than those without cancer. This particularly applied to patients with cancers carrying a poorer prognosis. After being discharged from hospital following admission with heart failure, people with cancer also had much poorer survival, living on average a year shorter than those admitted with acute heart failure without prior cancer (median survival: 1.6 years vs 2.6 years). Most of these individuals (68%) did not die from cancer-related causes. 

 

This work was carried out as a part of the Virtual Cardio-Oncology Research Initiative (VICORI), a joint partnership between University of Leicester, the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) [NHS England], and national cardiovascular audits held by the National institute for Cardiovascular Outcome Research (NICOR).