National root cause analysis of post-imaging pancreatic cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer through system wide identification and root cause analysis of missed pancreatic cancer diagnoses on imaging
IRAS ID
359385
Contact name
Nigel Trudgill
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sandwell West Birmingham NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 9 months, 1 days
Research summary
Aims of the research
1. To find the number of pancreatic cancers that were missed on specialist scans (Computed Tomography /Magnetic Resonance Imaging and endoscopic ultrasound) in each hospital in England.
2. To investigate why the diagnosis was missed.
3. To introduce recommendations to improve pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
Background
Each year in the UK, around 10,500 people are told they have pancreatic cancer. For about 800 of them, a scan was done up to 18 months before their diagnosis—but the cancer wasn’t spotted. We call this post-imaging pancreatic cancer or ‘potentially missed’ cancer. If pancreatic cancer is found early, it is possible to cure it by surgery. This project will help us understand why some cancers were missed. The learning will help find pancreatic cancer earlier and improve survival.
How we will do it
We will investigate the reasons behind potentially missed pancreatic cancers by using the same successful methods that helped us find out why some gullet, stomach and bowel cancers were missed.
We will look at national pancreatic cancer data and the scans that were done. We will find patients who had a scan that diagnosed pancreatic cancer. We will then check if they had earlier scans up to 18 months before, that did not diagnose the cancer. This will be done for each hospital in England.
We will ask radiologists from each hospital to carefully compare old and recent scans. They will try to figure out why the cancer might have been missed, if it was.
We will also collect scan images for future research. We plan to use Artificial Intelligence to help find pancreatic cancer earlier in future research.
Patient and public involvement - Pancreatic Cancer UK supported an event to help with the project design.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/EE/0203
Date of REC Opinion
2 Oct 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion