Trial Information

The Effect of Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy on Exercise Capacity in Colrectal Cancer Patients

Purpose: To evaluate the effects of chemoradiotherapy on pre−operative fitness of patients
prior to major colorectal cancer surgery.

Design: Patients will act as their own case−control.

Patients will be consented at the earliest available opportunity following the decision that
they have surgically treatable disease and they consent to pre−operative NACRT. Consent for
the study will be gained as an outpatient. At "visit 1" patients will undergo CPET, as is
our current standard practice, prior to commencing neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. As part of
the assessment, they will have pulmonary function testing (static lung volumes, lung
diffusing capacity). They will then undergo 6 weeks of long course NACRT, as is standard
current practice at our institution. At "visit 2", approximately four to six weeks following
chemoradiotherapy another CPET test will be repeated. This is also current standard practice
at our institution. Data from visit 1 and visit 2 will be compared in a paired manner. A
statistician will be consulted to assess the degree of normality of the data, the
statistical tests to use, and for power calculations. At no point will any treatments be
postponed or changed solely for the purposes of collecting data for the research.