Today, the first report from the audit pilot has been published (called the baseline report). It gives an overview of womb cancer in England including how many women are diagnosed with it and how many survive their diagnosis.

This is the first time a project has mapped out womb cancer care, including diagnosis, treatment and survival across the NHS in England.

Womb cancer is the most common gynaecological cancer and the fourth most common cancer in women in the UK. It affects 9,700 women and people with gynae organs each year in the UK, and it’s on the rise. Womb cancer is also called endometrial or uterine cancer.

The findings 

Womb cancer is on the rise 

The number of women and people with gynae organs diagnosed with womb cancer has gone up by 41% since 2001 in England. This is thought to be because the number of adults living with obesity in the UK is increasing. Obesity is the main risk factor in womb cancer. This is because many womb cancers are oestrogen dependent, and an excess of oestrogen increases your risk of womb cancer. As well as being created by the ovaries, some oestrogen is made and stored in fat cells, even after the menopause. So, if you’re living with obesity, you will produce more oestrogen which makes you more likely to develop womb cancer.  

Differences in diagnosis and treatment 

The report found that the number of people diagnosed with womb cancer, and the number of people who died, varied across England. This highlights a worrying ‘postcode lottery’ in the diagnosis and treatment pathways across England.  

The number of women diagnosed at an early stage (1 or 2) varied depending on how old they were and where they lived in England. This is important as womb cancer is very treatable when diagnosed early.

In some areas of the country, the stage data was missing from nearly 1 in 5 women with a womb cancer diagnosis. 

We hope that in later stages of the audit we will be able to understand more about the differences in diagnosis and treatment of womb cancer across the country. 

The pilot will run for two years and will look at the routinely collected data in womb cancer. This information can then be used to help make improvements to the diagnosis and treatment of womb cancer, and hopefully improve outcomes for those diagnosed. 

We hope that this pilot audit will lead to regular audits and tracking of womb cancer care to help improve practice across the country and save lives. This model has already been a success in ovarian cancer. At the moment, the audit includes data from England, but the team are working towards including data from all four nations.  

A huge thank you to all of our supporters who have helped make this audit possible. We look forward to keeping you up to date with its progress. 

Acknowledgement 

This work uses data that has been provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. The data are collated, maintained and quality assured by the National Disease Registration Service, which is part of NHS England.