The Get Data Out programme routinely publishes cancer statistics produced by NHS D (previously PHE) 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 Get Data Out tables for the 2023 release of data on prostate cancer between 2013 and 2020.
The cohort of prostate tumours used for Get Data Out is all tumours with an ICD 10 code of C61.
Tumours were classified into three staging groups:
If the tumour could not be classified into one of these groups, it was grouped with:
The staging system for prostate cancers changed from TNM 7 to TNM 8 between 2017 and 2018 diagnoses. However, as the GDO partition groups these tumours into broader categories we think the definitions of our partition by stage are consistent across the staging system change.
In TNM UICC 8, these groups are defined as
The grouping for TNM UICC 7 is almost identical, except as there is ambiguity whether stage 4 M0 tumours are node positive or node negative, these are grouped with stage unknown if no nodal component of stage was recorded. This only affects a very small number of tumours ( <100 ) annually.
The registration of 2019 tumours were being completed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to reduced access to the usual data sources, and despite the registry’s best efforts a noticeable decrease in data quality in some fields. This is most commonly seen in an increase in ‘stage unknown’ tumours, and a corresponding decrease in other stage groups. This should be noted when undertaking time-series analysis on the data.
The vast majority of cases are staged in either the UICC 7 or UICC 8 system. A very small percentage of cancers (less than 1%), were staged in other systems, as reported in the known limitations page. The following table shows the percentage of cases staged in each of UICC7 and UICC8 over time.
Locally advanced tumours were classified into two groups
In TNM UICC 8, these groups are defined as
The groupings are similar for TNM UICC 7, but as TNM stage 4 M0 tumours can be either node positive or node negative, they are grouped based on their recorded nodal status. (If no nodal component of stage is recorded they are grouped with ‘unknown stage’)
Tumours were classified according to their Gleason Score, the overall score of the tumour based on primary Gleason Grade and secondary Gleason Grade. Four main groups were used
Other groupings were also used when appropriate.
Tumours were classified according to age at diagnosis. Where possible a full breakdown as seen here was used:
This was truncated as appropriate for smaller groups, for example few patients had locally advanced node negative tumours with no recoded grade, so the age bands for this group are reduced to: