Frailty and surgical treatment for patients with colorectal cancer

Project reference number: 0084

Principal investigator: Simon Howell 

Plain language summary: Frailty is a term used to describe a particular state of health and a person’s overall resilience and ability to recover quickly from health problems.

Over 43% of bowel cancers in the UK diagnosed between 2016-2018 were in patients aged over 75 years old. Although frailty is most often linked to older ages, it can also affect younger people. Due to how difficult it is to identify frailty in routinely collected patient data, studies often use a patient’s age to decide if a person is frail. 

Comorbidities are illnesses or diseases occurring in one person at the same time. Although comorbidity and frailty are closely linked, they are separate conditions that can have different effects on a patient’s outcome from cancer and its treatment. 

The main treatment to cure bowel cancer is surgery to remove the tumour and surrounding tissue (known as a major surgical resection). It has been suggested in some studies that the reason survival figures differ is due to the selection criteria for surgical resection especially in the older age groups. 

This study aims to investigate and understand the link between age, frailty and comorbidity, and whether a patient receives a major surgical resection for their bowel cancer.