Pierre Guillou is lead clinician and principle grant holder for an MRC special project grant to investigate the use of minimal access surgery to treat large bowel cancer (the CLASICC Trial). This study was activated in 1996 and the recruitment was completed in 2002. The results of the short- term endpoints of this study were published in 2005 and the 3-year survivals and disease-free intervals are currently in press. The short-term health care economic data have also been published. Current work involves an MRC funded extension of the 5 and 7-year survival data from this study and a sub-study has also been funded by the MRC to examine the effects of laparoscopic surgery on the clinical consequences of intraperitoneal adhesion formation. Pierre Guillou has also been instrumental in the development of a successful bid to raise the funds to purchase a da Vinci surgical robot (£1.2m) and, as a logical extension of the CLASICC Trial, studies are now in progress in collaboration with David Jayne on the implementation of surgical robotics in the treatment of colorectal cancer.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Guillou PJ, Quirke P, Thorpe H, Walker J, Jayne DG, Smith AMH, Heath RM, Brown JM. Short-term end-points of conventional versus laparoscopic-assisted surgery in patients with colorectal cancer (MRC CLASICC Trial). Lancet 2005; 365: 1718-1726
Franks PJ, Bosanquet N, Thorpe H, Brown JM, Smith AMH, Guillou PJ. Short-term costs of conventional vs laparoscopic-assisted surgery in patients with colorectal cancer (MRC CLASICC Trial). Br. J. Cancer 2006; 95: 6-12.
Jayne DG, Guillou PJ, Thorpe H, Quirke P, Copeland J, Smith AHM, Heath RM, and Brown JM. Randomized Trial of Laparoscopic-Assisted Resection of Colorectal Carcinoma: 3-Year Results of the UK MRC CLASICC Trial Group. J Clin Oncology 2007; 25: 3061-68