Predicting treatment response to radiotherapy for bone cancer pain

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  An exploratory study to develop and evaluate a simple bedside tool for community use to identify who is most likely to benefit from palliative radiotherapy for cancer induced bone pain: Thermal testing in Bone Pain (TiBOP)

• IRAS ID

  192407

• Contact name

  Lesley A Colvin

• Contact email

  lesley.colvin@ed.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  NHS Lothian

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 0 months, 0 days

• Research summary

  Patients who have cancer deposits in bone often have severe pain. People can be badly affected by this, struggling to move about and unable to manage at home. Radiotherapy is the standard pain-killing treatment for these bone cancer deposits. This has to be given in a cancer hospital, with an initial scan, then more visits for treatment (eg daily for five days).
  The problem is that pain relief may take up to 6 weeks, with only one half of patients getting good pain relief. This means that for a considerable number of patients this treatment is futile. Hospital visits can be difficult and may be inappropriate for patients near the end of life. There is a burden from having radiotherapy, so it is important to understand who is most likely to benefit.
  We have found a simple test that may help predict which patients are likely to get pain relief from radiotherapy:
  A warm or cool probe is applied to the skin over the painful area. Some patients find the sensation of warm and cool different to normal. Our initial work suggests these patients are more likely to get pain relief from radiotherapy.
  We will recruit patients in the community who are due to get radiotherapy for bone pain. Patients will be assessed at home before and after treatment, using the simple warm and cool test. Ease of use of the probe, the effect of radiotherapy on pain and overall patient and carer experience will be monitored. We want to see if this simple assessment can be used in patients in the community setting; and how effectively it identifies patients most likely to benefit from attending hospital for radiotherapy. An optional part of the study will use one blood sample and urine samples at each assessment to study pain mechanisms.

• REC name

  South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  16/SC/0260

• Date of REC Opinion

  7 May 2016

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion