The Follow-up Study

Over 20,000 people a year in the UK get surgery or radiotherapy to cure their prostate cancer. They then get regular check-ups to manage potential side effects and see if cancer recurs so it can be treated quickly. The organisation of these check-ups varies across the country as we do not know which approach is best. The 4 approaches are:

1. Check-ups performed in hospital outpatients by the same team that provided treatment
2. Regular review by their GP with referral to hospital as necessary;
3. Planned shared care between general practice and hospital follow up;
4. Remote support and patient training to provide checks on themselves (self-care); and  reaching out to a doctor or a nurse when required.

Our study will compare these options to establish which is the best follow up approach for  patient safety, quality of life, for managing side effects, and costs to the NHS.  

We will observe what happens in routine NHS practice to compare different follow up approaches. To do this, we can use information routinely collected by the NHS from more than 100,000 people treated for prostate cancer in England over 5 years. We will follow these people for up to 7 years after treatment. We will send a specialised survey to approximately 40,000 of these patients. This will ask about side effects of treatments for prostate cancer and quality of life. Half of the patients that receive the survey will also receive a survey to understand preferences for the different ways follow up could be organised. We will also interview 40-60 patients to understand their lived experiences of follow up after prostate cancer treatment.

The FOLLOW-UP study is funded by the NIHR HTA Programme and is led by Professor Rakesh Heer based at Imperial College London.