Cancer survival

Introduction

The National Disease Registration Service publishes 2 dashboards on cancer survival:

• Cancer Survival in England: adult, stage at diagnosis, childhood and geographical patterns
• Index of Cancer survival

The series of cancer survival publications including Cancer Survival in England: adult, stage at diagnosis, childhood and geographical patterns are accredited official statistics. Users can also download the cancer life tables used to produce these cancer survival estimates and dashboards.

Acknowledgement

This work uses data that has been provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. The data are collated, maintained and quality assured by the National Disease Registration Service, which is part of NHS England.

Policy context

Users of cancer survival estimates include government organisations, health policymakers, cancer charities, academics and researchers, cancer registries, the public and the media. Population-based cancer survival statistics are used to:  

• monitor the implementation of the National Cancer Plan for England, including the ambition that “We will become a global leader on cancer survival by 2035” which will mean that “that 3 in every 4 people diagnosed in 2035 will be cancer-free or living well with cancer after 5 years”  
• demonstrate the pattern of survival by stage at diagnosis, to help show where earlier diagnosis could lead to improvements in survival  

• provide reliable and accessible information about cancer outcomes to a wide range of groups, including patients and health professionals via health awareness campaigns, cancer information leaflets and web pages  

Overall, cancer survival has been improving steadily in England and cancer mortality continues to decrease. Despite this, cancer survival in England remains lower than similar countries in Europe and around the world according to recent studies. These international comparisons have been reported by International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP), EUROCARE-5 and CONCORD-3.  

Please select from the dashboards below to view the interactive cancer survival tools:

OPEN CANCER SURVIVAL DASHBOARD (Please note this opens in a new window)

This dashboard provides an interactive presentation of the Accredited Official Statistics publications Cancer Survival in England: adult, stage at diagnosis, childhood and geographical patterns. Accredited Official Statistics are a subset of official statistics which have been certified by the UK Statistics Authority as compliant with its Code of Practice for Statistics.

Age-standardised survival estimates are available for adults for 31 common cancers between 1-year and 5-year in England. For 23 of these cancers, age-standardised estimates of survival by stage at diagnosis between 1-year and 5-year in England are also included. Age-standardised survival estimates are also available for children (age 0 to 14 years) diagnosed with cancer. Non-standardised cancer survival estimates for NHS regions, Cancer Alliances and Integrated Care Boards (previously published Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships) are available for 22 cancer sites.

OPEN INDEX OF CANCER SURVIVAL DASHBOARD (Please note this opens in a new window)

A convenient single number that summarises the trend of net cancer survival over a 16-year period. It combines the survival estimates for each gender and age group for breast cancer (women only), colorectal (bowel) cancer, lung cancer and all other invasive cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer and prostate cancer). Estimates of survival trends in the Index of cancer survival for adults are published for sub-Integrated Care Boards, Integrated Care Boards, Cancer Alliances and England (previously published Clinical Commissioning Groups and Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships).

Life tables used to measure background mortality when estimating net survival which are stratified by year, age, gender, region and socio-economic status. These are published as a resource for other analysts to use.

Select the box below to download the life tables:

For information on methodology please refer to the Cancer Registration Statistics Quality and Methodology publications and the Cancer Survival Methodology publications.

The next release of this dashboard is dependent on the release of the re-based small area population statistics using census 2021 areas, which will be published by the Office for National Statistics.

The tool is produced by the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS). Please send any feedback or queries to ndrsenquiries@nhs.net 

Please do not include sensitive or patient identifiable information.