RAMON opens to recruitment!
The RAMON study team are pleased to announce that the study has now opened to recruitment at its first site, The Royal Brompton Hospital, with several more sites currently in set-up.
RAMON is looking at whether patients with advanced lung cancer that remains after initial treatment benefit from local consolidative treatment (LCT) alongside symptom management compared to those who only receive symptom management. LCT uses a combination of surgery, radiotherapy and/or ablation (an image guided technique that uses heat to destroy cancer cells) to try to remove all remaining cancer within the lung and body. It is not clear if adding LCT gives better results for patients than symptom management alone. It is important to understand whether these treatments extend life and if so, how much they impact quality of life.
RAMON’s Chief Investigator, Professor Eric Lim, has already led successful trials with the Bristol Trials Centre, such as VIOLET and MARS2. He said: “If the trial is positive, surgical multimodality management of residual disease will become accepted practice and if negative we will be able to spare patients from an intensive regimen (without benefit) with considerable cost savings for the NHS.” [from: https://www.rbht.nhs.uk/research/advanced-lung-cancer-study-awarded-2-million]
The RAMON team are aware of the recruitment challenges this complex study may face. However, with a network of enthusiastic clinicians and research staff around the UK (and beyond) who feel strongly about the significance of the study, we are optimistic that the study will be a great success!
The study is funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme (reference NIHR131306). The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.