Parliamentary inquiry into cancer advised by Lancaster University Medical School

The Future Cancer inquiry will look at the innovations with the greatest potential to transform cancer diagnosis and treatment for patients and how these can be translated into frontline clinical settings.

The written evidence was submitted by an interdisciplinary research team conducting a study called “PARITY - Prehabilitation for Cancer Surgery: Quality and Inequality,” funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

The study is led by Dr Cliff Shelton and the project team includes Dr Lisa Ashmore, Dr Laura Wareing, Dr Yasemin Hirst, Professor Andrew Smith, Dr Chris Gaffney, Andrea Partridge, and Professor Jo Rycroft-Malone.

Prehabilitation is the practice of improving a patient’s fitness before surgery, with the aim of improving their postoperative outcomes. It often focuses on physical activity, diet, and psychological support and it has become an accepted part of the cancer surgery pathway, offering an innovative approach to reducing the length of hospital stays, inequalities and improved treatment options for patients who receive a late-stage cancer diagnosis.

Whilst many NHS organisations offer prehabilitation, services vary widely between providers.

The PARITY Study is researching the quality of prehabilitation provision across the UK and has identified low awareness of prehabilitation in cancer care even though there is support for healthier lifestyles and improving cancer diagnosis outcomes.

The team has worked with both groups of patients and clinicians to co-design a set of criteria for prehabilitation provision that sets out what is important.

Dr Cliff Shelton said: “The criteria include factors that the patients and healthcare professionals felt are most important to include, such as emotional health, exercise, nutrition, community support, access to information and equality and inclusion.

"Personalised care has emerged as a common theme in our research. As a result, we aim to build further knowledge in best-practice for personalised care in prehabilitation, which is informed by individuals’ backgrounds and capabilities.

"This will create principles for best practice, which can be transformed into clinical practice implementation guidance.”

The Future Cancer inquiry builds on the Committee's recent work on cancer services, including its report in April 2022, which was focused largely on current provision of cancer services and the impact of the covid-19 pandemic.