About the PROSPeCT study

Bowel cancer has one of the highest death rates of any cancer worldwide. In the UK, there are approximately 42,000 new cases annually. Up to 50% of patients will ultimately die from their disease. Removing the cancer with surgery is the main form of treatment, and refinement in surgical technique has lowered the chance of the cancer returning at the site of surgery. However, despite removing the cancer from the bowel, cancer can still spread to other parts of the body (metastasize). This has meant that up to 50% of patients may develop metastases by 5 years. Distant relapse rates have remained relatively stable in recent years. Patient outcome is very poor once the cancer has spread.

A better understanding of the biology of bowel cancer has brought new drug and radiotherapy treatments and changed how we treat patients. These advances have the potential to improve patient survival but have also highlighted a need for better identification of high-risk patients when initially diagnosed with bowel cancer, especially a group of patients who would not usually be offered drug chemotherapy as standard. The PROSPeCT study aims to improve the prediction of recurrent disease by combining clinical and imaging information in patients presenting with bowel cancer i.e., develop a prognostic model; to see if this information can predict who develops recurrent disease or not, by following up these patients over 5 years.

To read more about the study, follow the links on the left.