Welcome to the CREW Patients' Page. This page will provide additional information for those participating in the CREW study.
CREW is a cohort study to explore recovery of health and well-being following primary treatment of colorectal cancer.
The purpose of this study is to follow a thousand people who have had colorectal cancer to map out the path of recovery over time, to look at how long it takes to feel healthy and well again after cancer. Although it is known that people who have had cancer are likely to suffer a number of problems, both mental and physical, as a result of the disease and treatment; the normal course of recovery has not been described before.
We will look at factors such as how long does it take to get back to feeling well, how long do symptoms such as tiredness last and what sort of things can people do to help return to normal more quickly. This includes taking into account the disease itself, how much treatment people get, how much support is available to them and what kind of coping skills they have.
We will identify who is most at risk of problems and what people find helpful. We will also look at who has the confidence and ability to manage their own problems and how this can be supported by health professionals. This knowledge will be used to develop and test ways of supporting people to improve the recovery of their health and well-being. Our initial plans are to follow this group for two years, but we plan to follow them over a period of years, so that we can begin to understand what happens to people's health in the years after cancer treatment.