The National Prostate Cancer Audit (NPCA) evaluates patterns of care and outcomes and reports on diagnosis, treatment and outcomes for men diagnosed with prostate cancer in England and Wales. This second publication of the NPCA State of the Nation report in 2025 reflects the move to the National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN) reporting cycle.
The NPCA derives its indicators using information that is routinely collected by the NHS as part of the care and support given to men diagnosed with prostate cancer, rather than data collected specifically for the Audit. For men diagnosed or treated in England, the data are collated, maintained and quality assured by NHS England’s National Disease Registration Service (NDRS). For men diagnosed or treated in Wales, data are provided by Wales Cancer Network (WCN) using the Cancer Network Information System Cymru (CaNISC) or Cancer Dataset Form (CDF).
We use the National Cancer Registration Dataset (NCRD) for England, which is considered the ‘gold standard’ because it draws data from various sources. It also benefits from enhanced data processing by cancer registration officers and follow-up from NHS hospital trusts. NCRD data is currently available for patients diagnosed up to December 2022. The Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD) includes proxy tumour registrations, providing more up-to-date data but with less
accuracy than the NCRD. The RCRD is used in the NPCA Data Dashboard, updated quarterly, and in section 4 of this report. Data were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and so will be atypical to some degree during 2020-21.
We present results from eight key performance indicators (PIs) in the management of prostate cancer, as well as the variation in performance among providers in England and Wales. For the first time, we report the proportion of men with metastatic disease who receive systemic treatment intensification (PI4a and PI4b) and report the proportion of genitourinary complications occurring after radiotherapy to the prostate, with or without pelvic lymph nodal radiation (PI8).
Please refer to the NPCA methodology supplement for comprehensive details regarding this report’s data sources and methodology. Additional supplementary materials, including a glossary of technical terms, an appendix, an action plan template, a patient and public-friendly summary, details of our outlier process and each NHS provider’s results for data completeness and performance indicators, are available on the NPCA State of the Nation report 2025 webpage.