News Update on the Research Front

Nigel Hall

Consultant Paediatric Surgeon

Southampton University Hospital

1. The ToSCiN (Timing of Stoma Closure in Neonates) study is currently exploring the feasibility of a randomised controlled trial of stoma closure timing in neonates. Many of you have already taken part in one aspect or other of this study.  The final stage is a ‘consensus meeting’ during which there will be a multi-disciplinary discussion to understand the data collected during the study and hopefully reach agreement about the design and conduct of a future trial. The meeting will be interactive and the study needs neonatal surgeons to participate. It will take place online on 4 July 2022 from 10:00 – 15:00. To sign up, please go to https://forms.office.com/r/D0AXdXLPDX.  If you have any questions about the event, please email [email protected]

2. Clare Skerritt (Bristol) is looking for centres interested in participating in the Surgical-PEARL cohort study. Clare presented detail of this at the CSG meeting in March and will soon be looking to apply for further funding beyond the pilot phase. This study aims to collect a wide range of clinical, demographic, biomarker and genetic data on infants born across a range of congenital gastrointestinal surgical conditions with the aim of improving our understanding about pathogenesis, response to treatment, resource use and outcomes. If you are interested at all, with no commitment at this stage but noting that there is a real opportunity here to establish an exciting new network for this study, please email Clare directly: [email protected]

3. The MAGNETIC cohort study of children with ingested magnetic foreign bodies has started with over 40 cases reported in the first 5 weeks. If you have seen a children with ingested foreign body since May 1^stand not reported the case please do so now. You can access the online case report form here: https://redcap.link/MAGNETIC The study will run until 30^th April next year so please remember to report ALL cases of single or multiple magnet ingestions up until that time. If you have any queries please contact: [email protected]

There will be an opportunity to hear more about these and other studies at the BAPS congress in Birmingham in July. Firstly, there will be a business meeting for all involved in multicentre research on the Friday lunchtime. There is also a ‘Research Toolkit’ session on the Thursday covering the topic of Qualitative Research. We have three experts in this field giving talks covering a range of topics relevant to surgeons. I strongly encourage you to attend. Finally, I will be giving a presentation about the current and planned multicentre research activity in the UK to all BAPS members in the hope that we can encourage even greater involvement from all centres in the UK. Please do encourage your colleagues, particularly those not currently participating in any research to come along and get involved! If anyone has any thoughts for new work they would particularly like to discuss at any of these opportunities please let me know.

Curated by Prof Mark Davenport

[email protected]

14^th June 2022