Transforming lives after treatment

Posted by June Heath on 07 July 2025

One of the groundbreaking projects that RNOH Charity has funded – with grants of £148,483 and £65,000 respectively – is the Stanmore Children’s Orthopaedic Outcomes project, known as SCOOP. Its aim is to understand the lived experience of children with sarcoma, and other non-cancer orthopaedic conditions, after their treatment, in a comprehensive way. This means looking at a combination of physical, psychological and social issues that affect their return to ‘normal’ living.

When children have major surgery, they can experience a wide range of problems in their day-to-day life, for example getting back to school or finding new social activities or sports that they can enjoy.

The research has looked at different cohorts of patients, to understand the personalised factors for each – as outcomes for patients who have had a cancerous tumour removed, who have had an amputation, or who have received treatment for a spine curvature, can all be very different.

“We always think of patients first, and how we can improve their quality of life and their way of living, because surviving is not enough.” Dr Sherron Furtado

The researchers soon discovered, however, that as many of these issues continue into adulthood, investigations needed expanding to include the outcomes for adults in these groups as well.

So far, almost 80 patients have been involved in the project, and it has involved collaboration with researchers in the UK and around the world, to build on and coordinate with previous and other current work. The research has also included using gait lab technologies within the Motor Learning Laboratory at RNOH and accelerometers which are body-worn technologies used to track physical activity.

People wear these activity trackers at home to measure and gain an accurate picture of their physical activity once they are back from hospital. The gait technologies can also measure how people are walking on a treadmill and whether they are at risk of falls, so that exercises for balance, for example, could be incorporated into their follow-up package. This data will help rehabilitation specialists understand activity levels and again feed advice into clinical care recommendations.

Dr Sherron Furtado, Senior Sarcoma Research Therapist, is one of a team of specialists investigating this topic, contributing to SCOOP and working closely with patients. She says: “We always think of patients first, so what does the patient need and how can we improve their quality of life? When you’ve been through very difficult surgery, the clinical issue has been treated but then you go home, into your community, and it can be difficult to cope. Our research is about how we can make different groups of patients’ lives better by developing recommendations for improving their care once they have finished their treatment. However, you can’t give good recommendations without really knowing what these issues are in the first place.”

SCOOP’s ultimate goal is to translate the research findings to develop evidence-based treatment recommendations for how to manage and improve longer-term rehabilitation that is personalised for different groups; and for those recommendations to become national or international guidelines.