EFI in Cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The role of Electronic Frailty Index in improving outcomes for newly diagnosed Cancer patients undergoing systemic Chemotherapy treatment
IRAS ID
279324
Contact name
Agnieszka Michael
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Surrey County Hospital
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 9 months, 28 days
Research summary
Diagnosis of cancer is a fearful event for most people. Adequate information and provision of the best treatment can not be underestimated. The treatment of many cancers involves major interventions such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Treatment of people who are frail is even more challenging. Our health can be affected by cancer itself and a range of other conditions and it is really important that we balance the side effects of cancer treatment against the harms it can cause. We know from several studies that clinicians struggle with adequate assessment of older people living with frailty and with cancer and offer less aggressive treatment even if they are not frail. We also know that many frail and older patients suffer multiple side effects of treatment and sometimes die as a result of the treatment itself. We need an improved way of assessing frail patients with cancer. We believe it is possible to use a score that can be calculated from medical records that will help us to better estimate the risks of chemotherapy. This score is known as electronic frailty index (EFI) and has been useful in general practice. EFI is now automatically calculated by GPs from electronic medical records. To validate this type of score in cancer we need to undertake research project in 2 parts. The first part will look at the information we can obtain form historical chemotherapy records as well as GP databases. We also plan to interview patients, carers and clinical teams to make sure such approach is acceptable to them and that they would be prepared to use it in clinical practice. In part 2, that will follow in the future we plan to run a large clinical trial and test the electronic frailty index in patients who are referred for chemotherapy treatment.
REC name
Wales REC 6
REC reference
20/WA/0284
Date of REC Opinion
1 Dec 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion