The National Lung Cancer Audit 2018 report demonstrates the key findings from the 14th annual audit for lung cancer patients diagnosed in 2017 in England, Wales, Guernsey and, for the first time, Jersey. The purpose of the audit is to review the quality of lung cancer care, to highlight areas for improvement and to reduce variation in practice.
Patient-level booklet
We have produced a patient-level booklet to help inform lung cancer patients, their families and their carers about the level of care they can expect. Working with the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation we consulted lung cancer patients, carers and families to help us write this booklet, which showcases the results from our 2018 annual report.
Key recommendations
In our previous annual report (patients diagnosed in 2016), we made recommendations that lung cancer services should set out to achieve, covering data quality, process of care and treatment. Below we report the overall national performance (England, Wales, Guernsey) against these measures.
More detailed results are reported in the key findings and recommendations section of the annual report.
- This report covers patients with lung cancer first diagnosed in 2017, and includes 39,205 patients; 37,677 in England, 2,195 in Wales, 30 in Guernsey and 72 in Jersey.
- 37% of patients are alive at least one year after diagnosis which is a significant improvement to the 31% diagnosed in 2010.
- For the second year, the audit has identified the highest and lowest performing organisations from England and Wales; this is to improve learning between organisations and help reduce variation in care. This year, we introduced a fifth outlier measure. Further details can be found in our English and Welsh outlier policies, available to download below.
- The rate of patients being seen by a lung cancer nurse specialist (LCNS) remains steady with last year’s report, with 72% of patients being seen and 60% have a LCNS present at the time of diagnosis.
There continues to be improvement in the number of patients receiving surgery, with 18.4% of non-small cell lung cancer patients diagnosed in 2017 receiving surgery compared to 17.5% of patients diagnosed in 2016.
The full report is available to download below.
Report amended Feb 2020 to correct results for ‘cancer nurse specialist assessment’ from 70% to 71% (70% to 72% for England only) and for ‘cancer nurse specialist at patient diagnosis’ from 58% to 60%.