National Lung Cancer Annual Report

The National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA) has published its latest annual report. Utilising data provided by Public Health England (PHE), Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD) for England, the Welsh Cancer Network and lung cancer teams in Guernsey, the report provides information on the process of care and outcomes for patients diagnosed with lung cancer between 1 January and 31 December 2019 in Wales and Guernsey, and between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020 in England.

In England, the RCRD provided data on 33,091 patients diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019 and 31,371 patients diagnosed in 2020. In 2019, there were 2,240 patients diagnosed with lung cancer in Wales and 39 patients diagnosed in Guernsey. The report found that, in 2019 in England, the incidence of lung cancer recorded in the RCRD was 83% of that recorded in the 2018 full registration. Other key findings also include:

• For patients diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019, one year survival improved compared to 2018.
• In 2019 in England, curative treatment rates of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with stage I/II and good performance status from the RCRD were 81%. This metric fell significantly to 73% in 2020 with a drop in surgical resection rate from 20% to 15%.
• Compared with 2019, lung cancer patients diagnosed in England in 2020 had worse performance status, were more likely to be diagnosed via emergency presentation and less likely to have a pathological diagnosis, and In 2019 in Wales, the rates for surgical resection (16%), chemotherapy in small-cell lung cancer (65%) and systemic anticancer treatment for stage IIIB–IV, PS 0–1 non-small-cell lung cancer NSCLC patients (54%) remain below the audit standards – and have remained static for the past few years.

The report makes a number of recommendations including a call for the UK National Screening Committee to review the most up to date evidence on CT screening for lung cancer to inform decisions on the implementation of a national programme, in order that the proportion of patients diagnosed with lung cancer at an early stage can be increased.

This report published on 13/01/2022 but at that time, the 2020 survival data were not available. Since then, these data have become available and are presented and analysed in the following one page summary addendum and data spreadsheet.

Read the full report: You can read the report by clicking on the link below.

Stay-up-to-date: For notifications of future reports from HQIP, sign up to our mailing list.