PanCOS: Evaluating the results of pancreatic cancer surgery

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  PanCOS: Evaluating the results of pancreatic cancer surgery to develop a core outcome set (COS) that can be used to assess the quality of surgical treatment for pancreatic cancer in research, audit and registries.

• IRAS ID

  322867

• Contact name

  Jonathan Rees

• Contact email

  jonathan.rees@bristol.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Bristol

• Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

  2431, COMET initiative

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  This study will define a standard set of outcomes that can be used in assessing the safety and efficacy of surgery for pancreatic cancer. This is called a core outcome set (COS).

  At present, there is no standardisation of outcomes used in studies investigating surgical treatment of pancreatic cancer. This can make it difficult to combine the results of different studies to make decision about the best treatments. Studies may also record a large number of outcomes but only publish some of these outcomes in their results. This may bias what patients, researchers and health care professionals think about a particular treatment. These studies may also record outcomes that are important to researchers, which are not necessarily the same as those that are important to patients. This may mean research is not focused on the relevant areas.
  A solution to these problems is the development of a COS, which represents the minimum outcomes that should be reported in any study or investigation of surgery for pancreatic cancer. Using this set of outcomes in all studies would make it easier to combine results from different studies, reduces the risk of bias in assessing treatments and ensure clinically relevant research.

  Developing a COS has three phases. In the first, a long list of outcomes is generated by systematically reviewing outcomes published in the existing literature, and conducting interviews with patients and healthcare professionals to ensure no important outcomes have been missed. In the second phase, this long list is reduced down to a short list through a standardised scoring questionnaire in which all stakeholders vote for their most important outcomes. In the final phase, the short list is reduced to the final COS through structured voting and discussion at a consensus meeting of a group of key stakeholders.
  

• REC name

  South East Scotland REC 02

• REC reference

  23/SS/0069

• Date of REC Opinion

  15 Nov 2023

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion