The National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBoCA) has published its latest annual report, which aims to describe and compare the quality of care and outcomes of patients diagnosed with bowel cancer (of both the colon and rectum). It is separated into two parts:
The first part is based on 32,641 patients diagnosed with bowel cancer in England and Wales between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020. The report found that most patients presented via referral from a GP (54%), with the remainder identified by emergency presentation (18%), other referral methods (16%), and screening programmes (12%). Other key findings include:
Overall 90-day mortality continued to improve from 3.5% in the 2015/16 audit period to 2.6%
Patients presenting via screening programmes were more likely to have earlier stage disease and to undergo curative treatment (9 in 10 likely to be cured)
61% of patients undergoing major resection for stage III colon cancer received adjuvant chemotherapy, and
Two-year all-cause mortality for all patients remained stable at 33%.
The second part of the report focuses on the recovery of bowel cancer services from the COVID-19 pandemic, using data from patients diagnosed between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021. This part of the report found that early in the COVID-19 pandemic there was a very large impact on the diagnosis and treatment of bowel cancer patients, however service provision has largely recovered since then. In England, 63% of the expected number of bowel cancer diagnoses were seen from April to June 2020, while 91% were seen from April 2020 to March 2021 (compared to 2019).
Read the full report: You can read the report by clicking on the link below.
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