Assessing frailty and its impacts on patients facing major GI surgery
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessing frailty and its impacts in older patients facing major gastrointestinal surgery
IRAS ID
321557
Contact name
Jayan George
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Over 40% of patients with bowel cancer are over the age of 75. In older patients, rates of ill health and frailty are high, with frailty found in 6 in 10 patients over the age of 90. Surgery is the main treatment for bowel cancer, but the risks of surgery are higher in older people especially if they are frail. The main features of frailty are weight loss, lack of energy, weakness, slow walking speed and low activity levels. Frailty is a condition linked to an increased risk of death and major complications after surgery. As a result, older and frailer patients are often refused surgery for their cancer. If we could identify frailty more reliably before surgery, we could offer patients better counselling about the surgical risks and benefits. We could also offer treatments that might improve their fitness, making the surgery safer (pre-operative exercise, better post-operative support). Surgeons are not very good at measuring frailty because the clinical tests for it are complicated and take a long time to complete.
We want to look at 3 new tests that will make it easier to measure frailty in patients awaiting surgery for cancer and compare them against standard clinical measures of frailty in a pilot study. We hope that this will give us evidence to apply for a major grant to look at improving the care of frail patients with cancer in the future.REC name
South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/SW/0062
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jun 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion