QUANTUMS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The QUANTUMS study: Quality of life after Neuroendocrine Tumour Surgery
IRAS ID
231026
Contact name
Judith Cave
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Southampton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Neuroendocrine tumours (NETS) are rare and often slow growing tumours. The main treatment for localised disease is surgery. However, 70-80% of patients present with metastatic disease. In these cases palliative debulking surgery will be considered. Treatment targeted at the liver such as embolisation or ablation of metastases will also be considered. Although these treatments are regarded as palliative, they are associated with a good survival in our institution of 60% 5 year survival even with stage IV disease.
Because of the slow growing nature of these tumours the quality of life (QoL) for patents must always be considered. There is only very limited data on the quality of life after palliative surgery, despite the fact that it has been used routinely for many years. The aim of our study is to collect some quality of life data.
The primary aim is to investigate whether quality of life improves after palliative surgery for NETs. We hypothesise that it does. The reason we think this is that many NETS secrete hormones which cause symptoms (known as 'carcinoid syndrome), and debulking the tumour can help with symptoms. There is also some data from a previous very small (n=11) case series suggesting QoL benefit.
The secondary aim of our study is to investigate how long it takes for QoL to improve after surgery, and to ask whether there are some groups of patients who are particularly likely to benefit from surgery, for example those with carcinoid symptoms.
The study will be a prospective longitudinal cohort study at a single site. Patients will undergo standard of care treatment, and participating in this research will not affect their treatment in any way. The patients will be asked to complete questionnaires measuring QoL regularly for 2 years after their treatment.REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/NW/0459
Date of REC Opinion
1 Sep 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion