Скачать или смотреть Escaping Cancer, Risks in Rectal Cancer. EMM Haynes Charitable Trust Scholar, Henry Ward

Escaping Cancer – Investigating Risks for Death and Recurrence of Rectal Cancer

New research aims to shed light on how staging and treatment of rectal cancer, as well as cancer patients themselves, influences the risk of the cancer returning or causing death following treatment.

Colorectal cancer is among the most common cancers in New Zealand and is a significant cause of death. Although colorectal cancer can often be simply cut out, in some patients, the cancer can return years later either in the same place or in a completely different part of the body. However, we are currently not accurately able to determine who will get cancer again or who is most likely to die from it. This means follow up and monitoring of treated cancer patients is broadly the similar for a lot of patients and not always specific to individual patients and their risk.

Our research aims to investigate just this. Why specifically do some people have their rectal cancer return and not others and also what is common between those who die from rectal cancer. By unlocking these mysteries, we hope to refine treatment and surveillance of rectal cancer patients to avoid death and returning cancer as much as possible thus improving long term prognosis for future patients. This will be done by following up on and analysing data collected about 200 patients in the southern district health board who were diagnosed with rectal cancer and finding out who got cancer again, who died, and what risks these patients had.

There are several factors that we will be analysing including how advanced the disease was at diagnosis, what type of surgeon is responsible for the removal, age of the patient, and use of radiotherapy or chemotherapy in addition to surgery. By analysing how these factors influence recurrence and death of rectal cancer we can determine who needs more or less monitoring and adjust practice accordingly.