The National Ovarian Cancer Audit (NOCA) aims to evaluate the patterns of care and outcomes for women with ovarian cancer in England and Wales, and to support services to improve the quality of care for these women.
This State of the Nation report publishes information on the care received by 5,735 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in England in 2021 and by 293 women diagnosed in Wales in 2022. The main cohort includes women with ovarian cancer (ICD-10: C56), fallopian tube cancer (C57), primary peritoneal carcinoma (C48) or neoplasms of the ovary of uncertain or unknown behaviour (D39.1), excluding women with a borderline tumour derived from morphology data.
The audit uses information that is routinely collected by the NHS. For women treated in England, the data are collated, maintained and quality assured by NHS England’s National Disease Registration Service (NDRS). For women treated in Wales, data are provided by Wales Cancer Network (WCN), using the Cancer Network Information System Cymru (Canisc) electronic patient record system.
In England, NATCAN receives information from the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS), part of the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), NHS England. NDRS collects patient-level data from all NHS acute providers on patients with cancer using a range of national data-feeds. This includes the Cancer Registration datasets and the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset (COSD). COSD data are submitted to the NDRS monthly via Multidisciplinary Team electronic data collection systems. Clinical sign-off of data submitted to NDRS is not mandated in England. The information held in the registration dataset is compiled from a number of sources. A Methodology Supplement provides information on the data used in this report and the NOCA performance indicators.
This first State of the Nation report presents the results of four performance indicators against four quality improvement goals. In NOCA’s Quality Improvement Plan more quality improvement goals and performance indicators are mentioned and in future State of the Nation reports the number of performance indicators will increase depending on the completeness and quality of the data available to NOCA (e.g. performance indicators related to molecular diagnostics and cytoreductive surgery).
The completeness of the recording of data items in national cancer registration systems are essential for a national audit of ovarian cancer care, including stage, grade, performance status and morphology based on histology or cytology.
A Data Viewer provides results for individual organisations enabling regional and national comparisons to support local quality improvement, in addition to an Action Plan Template to support MDT discussions.