The Get Data Out programme routinely publishes cancer statistics produced by NHS E (previously PHE and NHS D) in a consistent table, called the Get Data Out (GDO) table. This table collects patients into groups with common characteristics, and then publishes information such as incidence, treatment rates, survival and Routes to Diagnosis for these groups.

This document sets out the definitions of the cohort and groups for the Get Data Out tables for the 2023 release of data on brain, meningeal and other primary CNS tumours between 2013 and 2020.

Brain, meningeal and other primary CNS tumours cohort

The cohort of brain, meningeal and other primary CNS tumours used for Get Data Out is all tumours with an ICD 10 code in the list in the Appendix. These ICD 10 codes cover all primary tumours of brain and meninges, all primary tumours of the endocrine glands within the brain (the pituitary gland, the craniopharyngeal gland, and the pineal gland), and all primary tumours of the Central Nervous System.

The cohort does not include lymphomas of the brain or bone tumours of the skull. It only includes primary tumours and does not include secondary brain tumours that have metastasised from elsewhere in the body.

Year

The cohort is first split by the year of diagnosis.

Tumour Type

Tumours were classified as Malignant Brain, Non-malignant Brain, Benign Endocrine and Non-benign Endocrine as documented in the Appendix. The behaviour of the tumour was determined by its behaviour as coded in ICD-O-2.

Age

Age splits are provided for:

Malignant brain tumours:

Non-malignant brain tumours:

Benign endocrine tumours:

Region

Where numbers allow (i.e. in patients aged over 30 in malignant and non-malignant brain tumours) the cohort is partitioned into 4 regions, North of England, South of England, Midlands and East of England, and London. Patients are assigned to a cohort by their postcode at diagnosis and the National Statistics Postcode Lookup. Regions are defined based on the NHS regions in 2017, which were current when this partition was devised, and have been kept steady to provide a timeseries.

Gender

Where numbers allow the data is then split into male and female.

Appendix

ICD 10 codes included in this cohort and their subgroups