Symptoms following Oesophagectomy version1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
LAsting Symptoms after Oesophageal Resectional Surgery (LASORS)
IRAS ID
270242
Contact name
Sheraz Markar
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
none, none
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Globally, esophageal cancer is the 12th most common cancer type and the 7th most common cause of cancer related death, with an overall five-year survival of less than 20%. The mainstay of curative treatment for esophageal cancer is surgical resection, which is often combined with chemo- or chemoradiotherapy. This multimodality approach to treatment, along-with centralization of esophageal cancer surgery to high volume centers and the introduction of minimally invasive approaches to surgery, have been associated with major recent improvements in short-term and oncological outcomes and survival.
With improvements in survival in more recent years, the assessment of patient reported outcome measures including, patient’s health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and the impact of long-term symptoms in survivorship has become increasingly important. However current data regarding the long-term symptom burden following potentially curative esophagectomy are extremely limited, and therefore evidence-based interventions are lacking. One population-based cohort study suggested around 40% of patients seek medical attention for long-term symptoms, associated with increased depression and anxiety.
The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) have developed questionnaires for the assessment of HRQOL during treatment for esophageal cancer [9,10]. These tools have been widely used in a research setting to assess the impact on HRQOL of multimodality treatment, variations in surgical technique and complications. However, the EORTC-QLQC30 and OG25 modules, are often considered too long and cumbersome to be used in clinical practice. Furthermore, these questionnaires are not designed for use in disease-free survivorship, when the nature of symptoms and their HRQOL impact may be significantly different, compared with the context of diagnosis and treatment.
Through a multi-center European study of 876 patients, we recently were able to identify three key symptoms that were independently associated with poor HRQOL as measured by validated EORTC tools (unpublished). We presented these findings to the Oesophageal patient association (UK) and Heartburn UK patient support groups who identified a further two symptoms to be included in the final clinical symptom tool that we aim to validate in this present UK study.REC name
North East - York Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/NE/0352
Date of REC Opinion
8 Nov 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion