Fig 1.
Final version of ALERT-B screening tool questions [18].
Fig 2.
Desired impact of the new specialised gastroenterology service.
Fig 3.
All three centres set-up a specialist PRD service; two with the nurse-led model (Cardiff and Brighton) and one with a consultant led-model (Sheffield).
Table 1.
Baseline data from participants referred to the gastroenterology service.
Fig 4.
Results for the EPIC bowel subscale and the EORTC QLQ PR25 bowel symptoms scale.
4a) EPIC Bowel subscale. The results are presented on a scale of 0 (= Extremely Poor QoL) to 100 (= Extremely Good QoL). A statistically significant (6 months versus baseline, P = 0.005; 12 months versus baseline, P = 0.013) increase occurs in bowel QoL (i.e., a reduction in symptoms). The left-hand axis indicates percentages for the stacked bar chart, whereas means and medians are interpreted via the scale on the shown right-hand axis. As the size of the rectangle for 80 to 100 increased substantially for 6 months and 12 months compared to baseline, this indicates that quality of life increased with time (as expected) as EPIC measures QoL on a positive scale. This is also reflected in the mean and median QoL scores (w.r.t. the right-hand axis), which increased in magnitude with time also. 4b) EORTC Bowel subscale. The results are presented on a scale of 0 (= Extremely Good QoL) to 100 (= Extremely Poor QoL). A statistically significant (6 months versus baseline, P = 0.021; 12 months versus baseline, P = 0.009) increase occurs in bowel QoL (i.e., a reduction in symptoms). The left-hand axis indicates percentages for the stacked bar chart, whereas means and medians are interpreted via the scale on the shown right-hand axis. As the size of the rectangle for 0 to 20 increased substantially for 6 months and 12 months compared to baseline, this indicates that quality of life increased with time (as expected) as EORTC measures QoL on a negative scale. This is also reflected in the mean and median QoL scores (w.r.t. the right-hand axis), which decreased in magnitude with time also.
Table 2.
Selected results as the standardized difference from baseline.
Table 3.
Breakdown of participants interviewed for the qualitative analysis, over three time points.