BJU Int. 2023 Jan 20. doi: 10.1111/bju.15970. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: We report NHS England data for patients with bladder cancer (BC), upper tract urothelial (UTUC: renal pelvic and ureteric) and urethral cancers from 2013 to 2019.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Hospital episode statistics, waiting times and cancer registrations were extracted from NHS Digital.
RESULTS: Registrations included 128,823 individuals with BC, 16,018 with UTUC and 2,533 with urethral cancer. In 2019, 150,816 persons were living with a diagnosis of BC, of whom 113,067 (75.0%) were men, 85,117 (56.5%) aged over 75 yrs, and 95,553 (91.7%) Caucasian. Incidence rates were stable (32.7-34.3 for BC, 3.9-4.2 for UTUC and 0.6-0.7 for urethral cancer per 100,000 population). Most patients (52,097 (41.3% (40.7-42.0%)) were referred outside the two week wait pathway and 15,340 (12.2% (11.7-12.6%)) presented as emergencies. Surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or multimodal treatment use varied with disease stage, patient factors and Cancer Alliance. Between 27-29% (6,616) of muscle-invasive BCs did not receive radical treatment. Survival rates reflected stage, grade, location and tumour histology. Overall survival rates did not improve over time (relative change: 0.97 (95%CI: 0.97-0.97) at 2 years) in contrast to other cancers.
CONCLUSION: The diagnostic pathway for BC needs improvement. Increases in survival might be delivered through greater use in radical treatment. NHS Digital data offers a population-wide picture of this disease but does not allow individual outcomes to be matched with disease or patient features and key parameters can be missing or incomplete.
PMID:36680312 | DOI:10.1111/bju.15970
