FAQ's

Cancer registrations are usually completed within two years of diagnosis but, in a small proportion of cases, the process can take longer. Consequently the cancer registration databases held by the Cancer Registries in the UK, and by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are continually being updated.

Cancer Research UK has used an extract of data from ONS as the source of the data for England to collate the UK figures. In contrast, the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) has obtained data for England from the National Cancer Information Service, which has data extracted directly from the eight regional Cancer Registries around England.

The two extracts from these sources have been taken at different times and, thus, there will be minor differences between them. As registration databases are regularly updated and revised, any resulting presentation of data may differ slightly from other published data relating to the same time period. Such differences are nearly always trivial.

The incidence statistics available on this website are compiled from data produced by the regional cancer registries in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Before we publish UK annual incidence statistics we have to wait until all of the data from the countries of the UK has been published. The process of registering a cancer is complex and there are a number of processes in place to ensure the data is of a high quality. This means there is usually a delay of 2-3 years before the data is complete enough to be published.

The mortality statistics are derived from the statutory death registrations in the countries of the UK. As it is a legal requirement to register deaths quickly, the mortality data on these pages is more up to date than the incidence data, but data processing still means there is a delay of 1-2 years before we are able to publish the data.

Cancer incidence and mortality estimates for later years are available, however, the CancerStats website uses the most up to date published data from the cancer registries, rather than estimates.

The survival data we have published on these pages are from a number of different analyses that have been done. The survival rates are often referring to patients diagnosed some time ago because you have to wait to know what proportion are surviving to one, five or ten years after diagnosis.

There are two ways of publishing mortality statistics - death registrations and death occurrences.

The mortality statistics presented on this web site are death registrations. This means that all deaths from cancer registered in a particular year are included. Occasionally a death may occur at the end of one year but be registered in another year, for example, a death occurring on December 31st 2005 will probably be registered in January 2006. Mortality statistics published by the Office for National Statistics are occurrences of deaths rather than registrations. Therefore there may be some small discrepancies with those published on this web site.

The printed reports are all dated and all of the information in them is valid up to that date. What we want to do with CancerStats online is to update the incidence, mortality and survival data more regularly. This will mean, for example, that the Breast UK CancerStats report contains incidence data for 2000, but the online version is updated to include incidence data for 2001.

Another advantage of the online version of CancerStats is that all the charts and tables can be downloaded into excel and these will also be updated annually.

The information on this section of the website has been adapted from the charity's successful series of CancerStats reports. These reports were designed for use by health professionals.

The information is designed to provide a detailed summary of the data and epidemiological evidence for people who already have a fairly good knowledge of the area. Many of the terms referred to in this section can be found in our glossary.

Of course, the information can be viewed by anyone who is interested, but other sections of Cancer Research UK's web sites might be more relevant and useful. For instance our CancerHelp UK site is written in plain English and is designed to be understood by everyone.

If you would like to reference us as a primary source then please use the following:

Cancer Research UK, followed by the web address in full of the page you want to use, and then the month and year you accessed the site.

Alternatively all pages in this section are fully referenced with the primary sources from which we have collated information.

If you would like to reference the published paper copy of a CancerStats report (downloadable free of charge from the Our Publications section of this website) we suggest this format: Cancer Research UK (year of publication), CancerStats report - Name of report, Cancer Research UK. So, for example, if you were referencing the Kidney Cancer CancerStats report the reference would be: Cancer Research UK (2008). CancerStats report - Kidney Cancer UK, Cancer Research UK.