Mortality

There were 3,509 deaths from ovarian cancer (C56-C57 in ICD-10) per year on average in 2015 to 2017 (10,528 over the 3-year period). The overall crude mortality rate was 12.6 deaths per 100,000 person-years. See Appendix 1 for cohort definition in terms of ICD-10 codes.

Age standardisation was used to enable comparison of CCGs with different age profiles. Age standardised mortality rates in the 195 CCGs ranged from 6.2 to 21.3 per 100,000 person-years. Two CCGs with low rates of ovarian cancer mortality have been omitted from the funnel plot as their counts of ovarian cancer mortality were too small to calculate age standardised rates.

Mortality data by CCG, STP and Cancer Alliance and for all of England are available to download from the contents page.

Figure 4. Ovarian cancer: directly age standardised mortality rates by CCG, 2015 to 2017

Mortality rates from cancer are driven by many factors including incidence rates (how many patients get cancer), stage (how advanced their disease is at the time of diagnosis), comorbidities (what other conditions they suffer from) and treatments received (and whether these prolong the patient’s life). Mortality rates do not specify how long patients survive after diagnosis or treatment.