Characteristics of patients with missing information on stage: a population-based study of patients diagnosed with colon, lung or breast cancer in England in 2013

Table 3 Number (%) of observed, expected and potentially avoidable patients with missing stage information, England, 2013

		Patients with missing information on stage at diagnosis
		Observed		Expected ^a			Potentially avoidable ^a
	Patients	No.	%	No.	95% CI	%	No.	95% CI	%
Colon cancer	21,522	3990	18.5	1433	578.7–2287.6	6.7	2557	470.2–1838.0	64.1
Non-small cell lung cancer	31,188	3935	12.6	1154	470.2–1838.0	3.7	2781	2096.9–3464.8	70.7
Breast cancer	41,657	6515	15.6	1689	838.2–2539.7	4.1	4826	3975.3–5676.8	74.1

95% CI 95% confidence interval
^a The expected number are those patients for whom stage would still be missing if all patients had had the same probability of being staged as the patients in the CCGs with the highest stage completeness. The difference between the observed and expected numbers is then the number of patients for whom missing data on stage was potentially avoidable. Numbers are rounded up to the integer

ISSN: 1471-2407