Routes to Cancer Diagnosis, Cancer Stage and Curative Treatment for Cancer Information to Support Visions from the Cancer Strategy
Revised 10 September 2025

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) has been developed to provide annual updates on progress towards three of the Cancer Strategy for Scotland 2023-2033 actions. These actions are: 1) harness data by routinely publishing cancer diagnosis through emergency presentation data, 2) to shift diagnoses of cancer to earlier stage and 3) to increase the proportion of patients treated curatively. It presents statistics on these actions packaged together for the first time.  The intention is to publish updates to these statistics on an annual basis. This release covers patients who were diagnosed with cancer in 2021 and 2022.  

Revision 10 September 2025: The figures presented in Table 5 of the report on the number of cases by therapy objective intent across 16 cancer types—have been revised to correct an error identified in the previous report.

Main points

Routes to cancer diagnosis:

• This action focuses on monitoring the distribution of emergency and non-emergency routes to diagnosis after the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions to routine pathways in 2020, for 18 cancers combined, the proportion of cancers diagnosed through emergency routes (an emergency admission to hospital) reduced between 2021 to 2022 (24.8% and 22.8% respectively).
• There was, however, variation by individual cancer type diagnosed through emergency routes between 2021 and 2022, the largest reduction for cancers of the kidney (-5.5%), but the largest increase for cancer of the oesophagus (+4%).
• There was a reduction in emergency routes to cancer diagnosis in all deprivation quintiles (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020 (SIMD)) between 2021 and 2022. The reduction was similar for those in the least deprived areas of Scotland (-3%), and the most deprived areas (-2.5%).
• The proportion of emergency diagnoses within each stage for 16 common cancer types combined that can be staged, reduced slightly for every stage between 2021 and 2022.

Cancer stage:

• This action focuses on reducing late-stage diagnosis (stages III and IV) and reducing the health inequality gap, the proportion of late-stage registrations for 16 cancer types combined remained similar between 2021 and 2022 (41.5% and 41.1% respectively).
• There are no consistent patterns observed by deprivation quintile (SIMD 2020) between 2021 and 2022, due to differences in the numbers of patients with unknown stage.

Curative treatment for cancer:

• This action focuses on increasing the proportion of patients treated curatively, the proportion of patients for 16 cancer types combined receiving treatments classified as ‘curative intent’ - treatment that aims to eliminate the cancer and achieve a long-term remission or a cure - remained similar between 2021 and 2022, with more than half the patients receiving treatments of ‘curative intent’ (53.6% and 55.1% respectively).
• Generally, use of therapies with curative intent decreased with increasing stage at diagnosis: in 2022 treatment was more likely to be curative for the majority in Stages I&II (81.2% and 80.6% respectively), reducing to 62.2% for Stage III and only 9.6% for Stage IV.
• There were, however, considerable differences by cancer type in 2022: for example, for Stage I breast cancer patients, 92.2% received treatments classified as ‘curative intent’ compared with 23.1% of patients with Stage I pancreatic cancer.

Background

This publication has been developed to provide annual updates on progress towards three of the Cancer Strategy for Scotland 2023-2033 actions. 

To coincide with the development of Scotland’s ten-year cancer strategy in 2023, the Scottish Government developed a new early diagnosis vision as a baseline, pre-strategy statement. This vision comprises two aims: 1) to shift diagnoses of cancer to earlier stage and 2) to increase the proportion of patients treated curatively.  Data monitoring the first aim of the vision “to reduce later stage disease by 18 percentage points with fewer people from more deprived areas being diagnosed at stages three and four” was initially published in June 2023 using 2021 as the baseline year.  These data were previously included in the cancer incidence publication for that year; however, as PHS are now publishing data to monitor the second aim “to increase the proportion of patients treated curatively”, it has been agreed to publish these data together in a separate publication.

Additionally, data monitoring a third action in the cancer plan “harness data by routinely publishing cancer diagnosis through emergency presentation data” is also included. These data on “emergency/non-emergency presentations” were first published in the cross-sectional descriptive population-based study of emergency and non-emergency routes to cancer diagnoses in 2020 and 2021 (Purdie, 2024). This paper mainly focussed on how the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted normal pathways to cancer diagnosis, including screening and non-acute symptomatic patients. Updated data for 2021 and 2022 are also presented in this publication and data files are available in the data section of the publication page.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be summer 2026.