Question reference: S6W-13403
- Asked by: Katy Clark, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 21 December 2022
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Current status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 20 January 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what recent steps it has taken to improve the accuracy of data collected around secondary breast cancer.
Answer
Secondary breast cancer – breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body – is recorded on the Scottish Cancer Registry if it has occurred when the diagnosis is first made. The Scottish Cancer Registry uses a variety of sources of information to confirm stage at diagnosis and the quality of this work is assessed through audit and external quality assurance.
Public Health Scotland is part of an ongoing JRC-ENCR (Joint Research Centre – European Network of Cancer Registries) short life working group to improve and standardise collection of information on cancer recurrence. The aim of this work is to improve collection of secondary cancers that occur some time after the initial diagnosis. This will add to the information about secondary breast cancer at the time of diagnosis.
Several new and better sources of data on secondary cancers are being integrated into the national cancer intelligence platform at Public Health Scotland (PHS). For example, Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy data for the whole of Scotland are now collated at PHS and these include information on whether treatments for breast cancer are for primary or secondary disease.
The National Cancer Quality Steering group have overseen the development of a newly proposed QPI on 'Recurrence Following Breast Cancer Treatment' in 2022.