Ultimately, this provides easy access for all to the best services, in a timely manner to improve overall cancer outcomes. The reduction in the treatment duration results in an increased capacity for the radiation units thereby allowing us to treat more patients in any given time and as such faster access to healthcare by all. Moreover, the positive effect on the radiotherapy services nationwide is substantial. This would allow the patients to return to normal life faster and bring down the economic and psychological burden. PACE C aims to reduce it further to just five fractions. Recent evidences have shown that it can be effectively treated over 4 weeks safely and has thus been adopted as the standard of care. The impact of prolonged treatment in terms of increased hospital visits and its effect on the budget is quite significant. Traditionally prostate cancer was treated with radiation over a period of 7-8 weeks. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer affecting men in New Zealand.
This will provide critical information that will guide future clinical trials. This research project will use the same clinically-relevant model of oxygen deprivation in the developing brain that helped establish therapeutic hypothermia, and tests whether giving recombinant erythropoietin after therapeutic hypothermia is better than cerebral cooling alone. It is not known if recombinant erythropoietin can improve outcomes after hypothermia. Recent evidence suggests that recombinant erythropoietin, a pleiotropic growth factor, can support survival of injured brain cells, and help promote repair of the newborn brain after oxygen deprivation. Thus, new strategies that can further improve neurological outcomes are critical. However, hypothermic protection is partial such that nearly half of infants either still die or develop disabilities, despite brain cooling. Therapeutic hypothermia, mild brain cooling, was developed in New Zealand and is now standard treatment for perinatal brain damage from oxygen deprivation, to improve infant survival without disability.
These outcomes are devastating for the individual, families and caretakers, and place a significant burden on our finite healthcare and educational resources. In New Zealand and around the world, perinatal oxygen deprivation remains a major cause of neonatal death and lifelong disabilities such as cerebral palsy. We believe that this study has the potential to drastically improve patient well-being and population health for a large number of New Zealanders. Bowel cancer and lung cancer are the two highest causes of cancer death in New Zealand, with almost 3000 New Zealanders dying from these diseases each year.
We are participating in an international trial to identify if widely used anaesthesia drugs can improve outcomes in patients undergoing surgery for bowel or lung cancer. Early evidence suggests that the more recent alternative anaesthetic drugs propofol (total intravenous anaesthesia) and local anaesthetic lignocaine infusion may protect the immune system, thereby reducing cancer metastasis, improving patient survival and decreasing chronic pain after surgery. Recent studies show that traditional inhaled (volatile) anaesthesia may have a negative effect on the body's defence systems, resulting in worse outcomes after cancer surgery. Alarmingly, early evidence suggests that the type of anaesthetic drugs used during surgery can affect cancer spread, patient survival and the risk of experiencing long-term pain after surgery. Each year 25,000 people in New Zealand are diagnosed with cancer, with a large number undergoing surgical treatment under anaesthesia.