Cancer Registration Statistics, England, 2021 - Full release

Most official statistics reporting on cancer use cancer sites that are based only on where the cancer started growing in the body. This can be a helpful way to summarise cancers but may sometimes hide the different types of cancer that grow in the same place. These different types of cancer can need different treatments even though they are found in the same part of the body. 

To better reflect the variety of cancers that patients are diagnosed and treated with, this publication introduces a wide range of subtypes of cancer that may require different treatments and may have different outcomes. The next update of the cancer survival publication will examine these outcomes using the groupings in this publication. 

The different cancer groupings introduced have been consulted upon with patient representatives, charities and clinicians. These cancer groupings will gradually evolve to reflect changes in medical knowledge and clinical practice; some parts of the body have yet to be mapped in detail and these will be added to over time. 

There are two levels of cancer grouping used and more detail about these are given in the reported measures section.

The main level of up to 35 cancer groups covers every registerable diagnosis. These main cancer groups capture a wider range of cancers than coding systems not designed specifically for cancer and, where appropriate, align with the groupings used in the Case-mix Adjusted Percentage of Cancers Diagnosed at Stages 1 and 2 in England publication. 

Some main cancer groups contain a mixture of cancerous and non-cancerous diagnoses. This is to recognise that, for example, a non-cancerous brain tumour may be fatal to a patient, is often treated in the same way as a cancerous equivalent, and these diagnoses may be reported on in future survival publications.  

The secondary level cancer groupings, where they exist, are more precise. For example, there are  16 subtypes of blood cancer. 

By looking at the types of cancer as well as their location in the body, this publication can now contain estimates on a particular group of rare cancers called sarcomas that are “hidden” within other cancer groups using only the ICD-10 coding system. 

Estimates of cancer incidence are published using these new cancer groups and are aggregated by deprivation (Tables 1a to 1c) and stage at diagnosis for stageable cancers (Tables 2a to 2c). Estimates for England are presented in Tables 1a and 2a; for Cancer Alliances in Tables 1b and 2b; Integrated Care Boards in Tables 1c and 2c.  

Main cancer groups that contain a disparate mixture of non-cancerous diagnoses and are not separated out into distinct detailed cancer groups are not presented in Tables 1 or 2 (for example, all remaining 'in situ' tumours that are not part of another main group). These diagnoses are presented in Table 3 of the accompanying data releases. 

The detailed definitions of each main and detailed cancer group are given in Appendix A. 

For comparison to previous years and to match the way mortality is recorded in ICD-10, a table of estimates of cancer incidence in groups defined purely by their location in the body using ICD-10 is provided in Table 3 of the accompanying data releases.  

Estimates of cancer mortality are provided in Table 4 and grouped in the same way as the incidence estimates in Table 3 (i.e. using ICD-10 coding) of the accompanying data releases.  

Table 5 (estimates of cancer incidence over time) is awaiting publication of restated populations between the two most recent censuses and will be published within 8 weeks of their release. 

Table 6 publishes the estimates of cancer registration data quality over time, this can be found in the October release of this publication (Cancer Registrations Statistics, England 2021- First release, counts only).