National Audit of Breast Cancer in Older Patients (NABCOP)

The National Audit of Breast Cancer in Older Patients (NABCOP) was a collaboration between the Clinical Effectiveness Unit at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) and the Association of Breast Surgery (ABS). The audit was commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP).

The audit worked in partnership with the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) at NHS Digital and the Wales Cancer Network (WCN), and used the routine data collected by these national bodies.

The NABCOP ran from April 2016 - September 2022 and was established to evaluate the process of care and outcomes for women diagnosed with breast cancer in NHS hospitals within England and Wales, specifically older women (aged 70+ years), compared with women aged 50–69 years.

The audit aimed to support patients, clinicians, healthcare providers, and commissioners in order to improve breast cancer care, as well as publish comparative information on outcomes and care processes from English NHS trusts and Welsh local health boards.

Building on the work conducted by the NABCOP, two national breast cancer audits (the National Audit of Primary Breast Cancer (NAoPri) and the National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NaoMe)) have commenced as part of the National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NCACC). The NCACC is run by the Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU) at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. To find out more about the breast cancer audits visit the NCACC website.

The NABCOP website will remain available for viewing previous outputs and publications. 

To find out more and view the most recent NABCOP Annual Report and NABCOP Public and Patient Annual Report visit the NABCOP website.

To view the supplementary materials published to help NHS organisations review their annual report findings visit the NABCOP website.

To view the peer-reviewed publications using the NABCOP data visit the publications page on the NABCOP website.