In January, we published preliminary statistics on 2018 cancer registrations. These statistics were published by 3-digit ICD10 code, sex and quinary age group as national statistics. The data shows that there has been a 3.6% increase compared to 2017, and that prostate cancer is now the most common cancer.

This work has attracted media coverage and received attention from Actuarial Post and Prostate Cancer UK.

Last month, the Transforming Cancer Services Team (TCST)-NCRAS partnership updated their London Screening Intervention tools. These dashboards show detailed information about planned screening interventions across London against screening coverage data. Data has been refreshed using updated information from stakeholders against screening coverage at April 2019.

By sharing this information, the delivery of interventions can be optimised across London, so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. This will lead to increased coverage and reduced inequalities between populations.

We have updated the emergency presentation metric to include data up to June 2019. It is available by CCG and Cancer Alliance, and by cancer site.

The number of cancers diagnosed through emergency presentations has slightly increased, with the one year average rising by 0.1% to 18.7%. Despite this, the longer term trend shows a decrease in the number of emergency presentations.

We have expanded the Cancer Services profile on PHE Fingertips to include breakdowns at Primary Care Network (PCN) level.

The profiles are used by commissioners and health care professionals to assess the impact of cancer on local populations and make decisions about services. The tool also contains data on cancer services at GP and CCG level, which is collated by us here at NCRAS.

The 4th February marked World Cancer Day. To play our part in raising awareness, we published a blog which highlights how important cancer data is and how our work is helping to improve care for those affected by the disease.

The blog was also promoted on Twitter and received a positive response.

We continue to measure the impact of Public Health England's Be Clear on Cancer campaigns which encourage those with cancer symptoms to seek medical assistance.

Recently, we published updated evaluation metric summaries for the first national respiratory symptoms campaign and abdominal cancer symptoms campaign, which look at diagnostics in secondary care.

NCRAS data was used in a paper published in the British Journal of Cancer (BJC) called " Errors in determination of net survival: cause-specific and relative survival settings". This work explores differences in cause-specific and relative survival estimates for common cancers.

Cancer registry data formed the basis of a study called " Cardiac Mortality after Radiotherapy, Chemotherapy and Endocrine Therapy for Breast Cancer: Cohort Study of 2 Million Women from 57 Registries in 22 Countries". The paper was published in the International Journal of Cancer (IJC) and found that the relative increase in cardiac mortality from cardiac exposure during breast cancer radiotherapy in the past was greater in younger women and when chemotherapy was also given.

A paper was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Open called " How representative are colorectal, lung, breast, and prostate cancer patients responding to the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES) of the cancer registry population in England?". The work explains the limitations of CPES data compared to the wider cancer population.

On 3rd March, the NCRAS partnership with the Transforming Cancer Services Team (TCST) will be releasing a dashboard describing care at the end of life for London cancer patients. For people resident in London at diagnosis who died between 2014 and 2017 with cancer as the underlying cause of death, the dashboard describes:

The data is provided broken down by age at death, sex, income deprivation, ethnicity, tumour-site, stage, and area of residence at diagnosis. The dashboard will be accessible via the partnership webpage.

On 16th March, detailed statistics on stomach, oesophageal, kidney and bladder cancers, and sarcomas will be released as part of the Get Data Out programme from NCRAS. Statistics about incidence, routes to diagnosis and treatment will be available.

Registration remains open for the Cancer Data Conference, and there are still a couple of days left to apply for the patient and carer bursary which closes on 23rd February.

We are also pleased to announce that the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health and Primary Care, Jo Churchill MP, will be opening the conference as the keynote speaker. Further details of speakers will be added to the conference website in the coming weeks.

There are also opportunities to get involved via sponsorship and the conference exhibition. If you are interested, please get in touch or go to the conference website.