Mr Paris Tekkis, (Reader in Surgery and Consultant Colorectal Surgeon)
Dr Gina Brown, (Senior Lecturer and Consultant Radiologist):
Mr Anthony Antoniou, Dr Sue Chua, Panagiotis Georgiou, Dr Robert Goldin, Dr Eddie J Edwards, Dr Gary Cook, Professor R John Nicholls, Royal Marsden Hospital, London
Problem addressed, background and significance. In the UK around 14,000 people are diagnosed with rectal cancer each year. Despite recent advances up to 15% of surgically treated rectal cancers develop local recurrence of the cancer, and in a proportion of these patients further surgery provides the best hope of cure. Currently there is little guidance for the surgeon to determine the feasibility of undertaking potentially curative but hazardous and complex surgery to remove either recurrent or locally extensive rectal cancers.
Method(s) used.Developments in imaging and a better understanding of pelvic surgical anatomy could improve outcomes for patients with extensive tumour.
This project will use new scanning techniques to measure tumour cell activity compared with scar tissue. It will fuse functional with anatomical images to provide the surgeon with a realistic, high-resolution, 3D road-map of active tumour and anatomy that will improve surgical planning and outcomes. The tumour relationship to nerves, vessels and surgical planes of dissection will be visualized and matched with giant glass-mounted histopathology (the study of the microscopic structure of diseased tissues) sections.
The results of this research will be… equally applicable to bowel surgeons and all other surgical specialties (gynaecology, urology and sarcoma surgery) that deal with complex rectal and pelvic cancers. They will help them improve techniques and perform more precise surgery with better outcomes in terms of tumour clearance, survival and recurrence rates. The project will also form the foundation of future workshops in advanced pelvic anatomy and surgery that will help all disciplines that deal with pelvic malignancies.
This page was last updated on 20-07-2011