Improving Diagnosis and Treatment for Patients With Rectal Cancer

The cancer stage information from scans guides pre-operative treatment and the type of surgery offered. The investigators are studying whether a new Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) staging method can improve the accuracy of prognosis for patients diagnosed with rectal cancer. The investigators will provide consultant radiologists with the know-how to report MRI scans using this new method and compare this with the existing method. This study will test this by comparing how accurately the old versus new method predict the outcomes of patients. The existing method relies on radiologists determining if tumour has spread through the bowel wall or not and whether there are suspected malignant lymph nodes. The new method looks for tumour spread into the veins and whether or not there are tumour deposits. Our previous research has shown that the new method is much more accurate at predicting prognosis, but this finding needs to be verified by a larger multicentre study.

The investigators are also studying the patient journey, so the investigators can better understand patients' experiences and the impact that treatments have on their quality of life. The investigators wish to understand if improvements in the accuracy of prognosis from scans could change treatment decisions in future. The investigators will also compare the radiology scan prediction of prognostic factors by looking carefully at the tumour specimens.