A study looking at a new way of checking that all the cancer has been removed during surgery for prostate cancer

This study is looking at a new way of checking that all the cancer has been removed in men having surgery for prostate cancer.

If you have prostate cancer contained within your prostate gland, one of the treatments you may have is surgery to remove the prostate gland (prostatectomy).

It can be difficult for the surgeon to know for sure whether they have removed all of your cancer. After your operation, the removed tissue is routinely looked at more closely by an expert (pathologist) in the laboratory. They confirm that the cancer is contained within the prostate gland. They also check that the surgeon has removed a border of tissue around the tumour that does not contain cancer cells. This is called a clear margin.

If there isn’t a clear margin, you are more at risk of the cancer coming back. And you may need further treatment, which may cause more side effects.

Surgeons want to find out whether a new device could help them to look at the cancer they have removed straight away, while you are still in the operating theatre. The device is called a '18F-choline CLI specimen Analyser'. It is a type of scan. CLI stands for Cerenkov Luminescence Imaging and 18F-choline is a radioactive drug that is part of the scan.

If this new device works, it would mean that the surgeon knows whether all of your cancer has been removed while you are still in the operating theatre. If they need to, they can then remove more tissue in the same operation.

The aims of this study are to

• Learn more about how the device works and make improvements to it if necessary

• Compare the results from the new device with the pathologist's report

• Find out if it can be looked at further in a larger trial

You will not benefit directly from this study, but the results may be used to improve treatment for patients in the future.