National Bowel Cancer Audit published
The report of the National Bowel Cancer Audit for England and Wales was published today. The audit shows some promising improvements in patient care in the past two years, with 95% of cases being discussed at a multidisciplinary team (MDT) meeting, compared to 84% of cases in the 2009 report. 80% of cases were seen by a nurse specialist, which is a significant increase from 51% in the 2009 report.
The audit found that some form of surgical procedure was performed in 75% of cases and a major resection was undertaken in 60% of patients. Urgent or emergency surgery was more common in colonic (27%) than rectal surgery (12%). Overall post-operative mortality continued to fall but increased mortality rates were seen again in urgent and emergency cases as compared with elective or scheduled cases.
The report also makes the following recommendations:
- Trusts should continue to review their audit data and, using both this report and the recently distributed data completeness report, ensure that accurate and complete data is being submitted to the national audit
- MDTs should arrive at an accurate integrated staging of as many cases of bowel cancer as possible
- As laparoscopic techniques become more commonly employed, current NICE guidance of training should be encouraged
- As more comparative information becomes available to MDTs, from a variety of sources, there should be regular discussions at a local level to ensure that complete data is submitted to the audit and any perceived outlying status is investigated promptly. This may involve local audits, review of submitted data, and in depth analysis using case notes.
The full report is available here.
Data tables are available here.
