Previous ABS & National Audits
On this page you can find information about other audits that may be of interest to ABS members.
A national audit of provision and outcomes of mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery for women in England and Wales.
The National Mastectomy and Breast Reconstruction Audit was commissioned and funded by the Healthcare Commission to assess and improve the quality of care provided to women with breast cancer undergoing mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery. The audit evaluated the care process and measured treatment outcomes for these women.
What were the aims of the audit?
The audit:
- described provision of and access to breast reconstruction in England and Wales
- evaluated current clinical practice in mastectomy and breast reconstruction
- measured outcomes following mastectomy with or without reconstruction
- assessed the quality of information provided to women undergoing mastectomy and their satisfaction with the reconstructive choices made.
Who carried out the audit?
The audit was conducted by a team of specialist clinicians and auditors from:
- the Association of Breast Surgery (Lead Breast Surgeon - Jerome Pereira)
- the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (Lead Plastic Surgeon - Chris Caddy)
- the Royal College of Nursing (Lead Specialist Nurse - Carmel Sheppard)
- the National Clinical Audit Support Programme (NCASP) of The Information Centre for health and social care
- the Clinical Effectiveness Unit of The Royal College of Surgeons of England and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Reports
The National Mastectomy and Breast Reconstruction Audit produced 4 Annual Reports which you can view here.
The Breast Cancer Clinical Outcome Measures (BCCOM) Project aimed to audit the clinical management of symptomatic breast cancers in the United Kingdom. The information needed for the audit was obtained from existing sources such as the data currently collected by cancer registries and individual clinicians. The audit was conducted in collaboration with the UK cancer registries and 191 breast surgeons registered with the UK Association of Breast Surgery at BASO (now the Association of Breast Surgery).
Please be aware that:
- BCCOM only covered the first invasive breast tumour diagnosed in a patient in that year, so not all tumours were potentially audited
- BCCOM relied upon the goodwill/time of clinicians to complete this in their own time; response rates varied by hospital and over time
- BCCOM was not a compulsory audit and only cover ~40% of tumours diagnosed in each audited period, so the results may not be representative of the whole patient (or clinical) communities
- For these reasons alone, the results from BCCOM should not be directly compared to those of a compulsory data-driven audit like NABCOP
Below you can download copies of the All Breast Cancer Report and BCCOM booklets.