The CANDID study team wishes to thank everyone who participated in this project. Recruitment finished in 2017. The study team are in the process of applying for cancer registry data from NHS England. This will be used to link the information on participants’ characteristics and symptoms to cancer outcomes that occurred within 5 years of that participant’s recruitment to the study in England. The study team may later apply to NHS Wales to collect similar data for participants who reside in Wales. Individuals who have chosen to opt out of their confidential information being used for research via the NCRAS service will not have their data accessed in this manner.
We anticipate that data will be received from NHS England within 2024, and that the results of the analysis will be published with open access in 2025. The initial plan is to retain the data for a period of 3 years (until a date within 2027) to allow for further analysis of the blood and tissue samples for predictors of cancer diagnosis. For further information, please refer to the study-specific privacy notice.
You have been asked to take part in this study because you have visited your GP with symptoms that we are interested in. This will help us develop a way for minimising unnecessary examinations for low risk people and develop a speedy diagnosis for high risk people. You will be one of 20,000 people with lung and bowel symptoms asked to take part in this research.
The majority of patients who come to their doctor with lung symptoms (for example a cough) or bowel symptoms (for example, loose stool) do not have anything seriously wrong with them. However, a very few people are at risk of cancer. We would like to help doctors diagnose cancer quickly so that potential high risk patients are detected sooner and unnecessary examinations are minimised for those patients that are low risk. This research is about finding what symptoms and examinations are best for predicting lung and bowel cancer.
This research is being sponsored and co-ordinated by the University of Southampton in collaboration with other leading Universities throughout the country (Universities of Bristol, Manchester, Oxford, London, Nottingham, Birmingham and Keele). It is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) National School of Primary Care Research (NSPCR) and has been approved by the South Central Oxford A. Research Ethics Committee (REC). Your local NHS Trust Research and Development department have also reviewed it and has given their permission for it to be carried out in your area.