Cancer Registration Statistics, England, 2023

Counts of cancer incidence are presented for diagnoses registered in 2023.

Counts of mortality are presented for deaths from cancer registered in 2023.

The crude rate is the number of events in a specific population during a time period per 100,000 people. An event can either be a tumour diagnosis where the measure would be an incidence rate, or a death from cancer where the measure would be a mortality rate. A crude rate is calculated using the following equation:

(total number of events)/(total population) X 100,000

In this publication and the accompanying data tables, the non-standardised rate refers to the crude rate for all ages combined, whereas the age-specific rate refers to the crude rate for individual age bands.

Age-standardised cancer incidence and mortality rates are presented for males and females. Age and gender-standardised rates are presented for persons. An age-standardised rate is a weighted average of the age-specific rates, where the weights uses age-specific proportions of a standardised population European Standard Population 2013 (ESP). Standardising rates with the ESP accounts for the differing age structure of different populations. This means that geographical and time comparisons of the rates can be made. ONS recommends that Accredited Official Statistics outputs use the 2013 ESP aggregated to 90 and over, due to the availability of population estimates of assured quality for this age band.

Breast cancer estimates for England are also given according to their hormone receptor status markers as set out in Table 2. The way in which a breast cancer is sensitive to different hormone receptor statuses influences the treatments offered to patients and their likely outcomes. The hormone statuses included in this publication are oestrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), these groupings are not mutually exclusive.  Triple negative breast cancer occurs when the status for each of the three hormone receptors are negative – these are included as a separate category in the downloadable data tables.

More information can be found about hormone receptors ER and PR and HER2 on the Breast Cancer Now website.

Prostate cancer estimates are also given according to their Gleason Grade Group (sometimes called a Cambridge Prognostic Group). Like hormone receptor statuses in breast cancer patients, they can influence the treatments offered to patients and indicate the likely outcomes.

More detail on Gleason Grade Groups.