Patients who are diagnosed with early bowel cancer may be advised to have chemotherapy treatment for 24 weeks after surgery. This treatment increases their chances of surviving the cancer.  Unfortunately, all chemotherapy treatments have side effects and these side effects often get worse as the treatment goes on.  Previous studies have demonstrated that a shorter course of chemotherapy may be less toxic without being less effective.

The aim of the SCOT trial is to definitively answer the question of whether 12 weeks of chemotherapy is as effective in reducing cancer recurrence as the current standard practice of 24 weeks of the same chemotherapy drugs. It is hoped that the 12 week chemotherapy treatment will not only show less side effects than the 24 week treatment, and would be much more convenient, but also would be no less effective . New Zealand patients joined others from around the world, and were randomly assigned to have their treatment for 12 or 24 weeks.

The early results have been released and show that side effects, such as nerve damage, were less for those patients receiving 12 weeks of chemotherapy compared to those receiving 24 weeks. However, the patients need much longer follow-up to establish whether recurrence rates and survival are the same for 12 compared with 24 weeks of treatment, and also to check for persisting long term nerve side effects.

This is the Ministry of Health website and contains links to an update session held in August to discuss the results to date from the Waitemata DHB pilot screening programme, and plans for national roll out. The Ministry of Health are currently consulting the health sector and other agencies in order to set the groundwork for a national roll out of bowel cancer screening. The link contains a number of informative and downloadable presentations from the national health sector meeting in August 2015.

Bayleys SUPERCAR for a Super Cause event held on October 17 in Wellington
The official handover of $102,300 from Mark Hourigan of Bayleys Capital Commercial,  Glenn Peachey of Partridge Jewellers and Rick Armstrong of Armstrong Prestige. Grant Baker and Ruth Davy of GICI accept the cheque and are thrilled with this contribution. Thanks to all sponsors and supporters.