NCDB-sourced study focuses on post-treatment surveillance for colorectal cancer patients

The first findings from a collaborative study within the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Cancer Programs—and published earlier this spring in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)—showed no significant association between frequency of surveillance testing and the time to detection of recurrence for colorectal cancer patients.

The study is an effort of the ACS Clinical Research Program and the Commission on Cancer and uses data from the National Cancer Database (NCDB), which is jointly sponsored by the ACS and the American Cancer Society. It focuses on post-treatment surveillance for breast, colon, and lung cancers and was funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

This portion of the study included more than 8,500 patients and was the first of eight manuscripts accepted for publication from a larger study conducted in 2015. The corresponding author is George J. Chang, MD, FACS, chief, section of colon and rectal surgery; professor of surgical oncology and health services research; and director of clinical operations, minimally invasive and new technologies in oncologic surgery program, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston.

View the full article on the JAMA website.