The Newcastle Colorectal Cancer team provide specialist care for colorectal cancer referrals from the Newcastle area and tertiary (specialist) referrals for either early rectal cancer, or advanced and recurrent colorectal cancer.
We receive more than 400 referrals a year including around 80 advanced and recurrent referrals a year and between 80-100 anal referrals (including cancers invading into nearby organs such as the womb, bladder, spine, nerves).
The team is actively involved in research trials (CREST, INTACT) and projects to improve cancer care for patients (PELVEX group, IMPACT group).
We have regularly been in the top 10% of hospitals for cancer survival outcomes (NBOCAP reports) for both 90-day and two-year outcomes.
We have a dedicated team of radiology, pathology, oncology, nurse specialists, dietitian, physiotherapy and cancer administrators. They provide care for hundreds of patients across the north-east and beyond living with and being diagnosed with cancer.
The team aim to support those with a diagnosis undergoing and after treatment providing holistic care.
We specialise in providing minimally invasive surgery – either robotic or laparoscopic surgery where possible – and have a long pedigree in training and developing these services throughout the UK.
We link with an advanced endoscopy team that specialise in treating complex polyps (led by Dr D Nylander and Dr M Gunn) as well as using organ-preserving techniques to avoid major resection and morbidity such as:
- TEMS (trans-anal microsurgery – Mr Paul Hainsworth) or
- TAMIS (Trans-anal minimally invasive surgery – Mr Hugh Gallagher) for early tumours.
Advanced and recurrent colorectal cancer service
Newcastle’s Advanced and Recurrent Colorectal Cancer service (NARC) was created in 2013.
It acts as a specialist tertiary referral unit for the North East and Cumbria for all advanced and recurrent colorectal cancers. It is actively involved both nationally and internationally as a network of advanced cancer units.
The team run dedicated cancer clinics and have a weekly multi-disciplinary team meeting to discuss all cancer cases. The advanced cancer team deal with an increasing referral base and have a reputation nationally for the quality and treatment range of care provided.
We also link with our Regional Liver (Mr John Hammond, Liver surgeon) and thoracic unit for patients (Mr Sion Barnard and Mr Dhamendra Agrawal) with metastatic disease allowing access to a wide variety of modalities for surgical colorectal cancer treatment.
We receive around 80 referrals a year combined with the regional anal cancer service (a further 80-100 referrals/year).
Surgery for advanced or recurrent colorectal cancer involves adjacent organs and can include major blood vessels, bones (especially of the spine), womb/ovaries, prostrate, bladder or other abdominal organs.
We work as a collaborative team with surgical specialities including:
- orthopaedics (Mr Alistair Irwin)
- plastic surgery (Mr Mo Alrawi)
- urology (Mr Chris Harding, Miss Vicky Lavin, Professor Rakesh Heer)
- gynaecology (Miss Rachel O’Donnell and Mr Tony Chalhoub) and
- vascular surgery (Mr James McCaslin, Mr Craig Nesbitt, Mr Mike Clarke)
