SPOT-LITE v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
SPOT-LITE: Study of PhOTobiomodulation impLementation for mucosiTis managEment in children
IRAS ID
336518
Contact name
Claudia Heggie
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN12589862
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
BACKGROUND
Most children with cancer are treated with chemotherapy. Eight in every ten of these children develop a sore mouth, which can involve extensive, painful ulceration. For some, this prevents eating and drinking.
Children may require hospitalisation to receive painkillers and nutrition through a drip. Ulcers can delay cancer treatment which can lower the chances of curing their cancer. Children tell us that these ulcers harm their quality-of-life.
When receiving chemotherapy, a special red light can be shone into the mouth, which reduces the risk of painful ulcers by about half. We call this photobiomodulation, or PBM for short. PBM is recommended by many national and international guidelines. However, in early 2022 only two U.K. children’s hospitals delivered this treatment. We don’t know why hospitals are not using PBM or how best to support hospitals to start delivering this treatment.
AIM
We want to explore why PBM isn’t widely used. We will then work with different groups to create a collection of resources and strategies, which can be adapted to local context, to help children’s cancer centres start to deliver PBM.
DESIGN AND METHODS
We will ask children with cancer, their parents, professionals involved in delivering chemotherapy, and NHS managers and commissioners what they think would help and hinder PBM services. We will use the information from these conversations to create resources to help these groups of people understand, deliver and get the most benefit from PBM. We will use implementation-science approaches to make sure the resource is based on theories tested through rigorous research. We will test our theory and research-based resource with a range of children’s cancer hospitals. We will evaluate whether our resource helps increase PBM use and ask professionals about their experience in starting a PBM service with this resource.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - South Yorkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/YH/0080
Date of REC Opinion
7 May 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion