The COMBAT Project
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What is The COMBAT Project?
Children with brain tumours usually need to have surgery as part of their treatment. Harms or complications can occur as a consequence of surgery to remove the tumour. The COMBAT Project aims to improve how these are reported in research and clinical care.
Why is this project needed?
Brain tumours are one of the most common types of tumours in children. Children with brain tumours usually get surgery as their first type of treatment. All types of treatment have the risk of complications or harms. This is also true for surgery to remove brain tumours.
Research and clinical studies should record the results of treatment. We call these results outcomes and they can be both positive and unwanted. Unwanted outcomes include harms and complications. Outcomes aren’t always measured and reported in the same way. This makes it difficult to compare or combine the results of research.
The COMBAT Project will help us do this by agreeing which unwanted outcomes that studies must always report. We call this a “Core Outcome Set”. You can watch a short video about what core outcome sets are below.
Brain tumours in children are very rare. This means that it is very important we make the best use of existing and new research. By doing this we can improve treatment and care for children with brain tumours.
Why have you asked me to take part?
We have invited you to take part because you or your child has had surgery for a brain tumour, or you treat children with brain tumours.
Your experiences are really important. We want to know what was important to you after the operation, and what impact it has had.
Participants
Patients
Parents/carers/
guardians of children with brain tumours
Health professionals
Researchers
How will we do the project?
This Project involves three stages.
You would have been invited to take part in Stage 2 or Stage 3. You can find out more about each stage from the videos and information sheets in the resources page!
Stage 1
A review of scientific publications to see what outcomes we report
Stage 2
Interviews with patients and their parents/carers/guardians to find out what is important to them
Stage 3
A two part survey to tell us what you think the most important unwanted outcomes of surgery are.
What is a core outcome set?
The video below explains more about a core outcome set is.
Further information can be found from the COMET Initiative in the link below:
Project information
Registration
This Study is registered with the COMET database as Study 1968 (https://www.comet-initiative.org/Studies/Details/1968).
Ethics
IRAS ID: 326584
Sponsor
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital
The Research Sponsor can be contacted at research@alderhey.nhs.uk
The Research Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dpo@alderhey.nhs.uk
