Members 2024-25
Tom Pinkney (Chair), Pamela Buchwald (Asst Chair), Alaa El-Hussuna (Cohort Studies Chair), Dion Morton, Dragomir Dardanov, Erman Aytac (Comms Chair), Gabrielle van Ramshorst; Hans Lederhuber, Jim Khan, Karoline Horisberger, Mostafa Shalaby, Nir Horesh; Sue Blackwell (Patient Rep), Niki Christou (Guidelines Rep), Caterina Foppa, Yurij Kosir (Y-ESCP Rep), Carolynne Vaizey (ESCP Secretary), James Keatley (Research Manager).
A fruitful year
The Research Committee and Cohort Studies & Audits Working Group have had a fruitful year, delivering multiple parallel ongoing projects ongoing as well as major outputs coming to fruition and publication. We are proud that research activities form a key pillar of how ESCP successfully engages with its members throughout the year. The ongoing further internationalisation of our society, with the continuing demonstrable expansion of our membership network, is also related to our excellent research pedigree. We remain committed to conducting research which is relevant, timely and useful, and is driven by the interest and needs of the entire ESCP.
It is now 10 years since our first major ESCP snapshot audit of right hemicolectomy operations was conducted in 2015. This opened a new chapter in research activities, which has continued and expanded since then. As well as several further audits of practice, we have also advanced to undertake true cohort studies (including collecting directly patient-reported outcomes) as well as randomised trials. At the Paris Tripartite meeting we will celebrate this decade of activity with a review of our collective progress and project outputs.
Looking forward
We are now therefore moving into the second decade of the new phase of ESCP research. We have shifted to a federated model of research delivery and data analysis, which we hope will help relieve the intermittent bottlenecks and delays which can occur when all activities are running through one central hub. A further aspect of our research future is to build upon the truly global engagement we have increasingly enjoyed these past few years. This includes partnering with other colorectal associations and societies across the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. We are thrilled to have introduced a new session at the Paris meeting called ‘Tripartite Research Opportunities’, in which colleagues from the USA, UK and Australasia will present their new prospective projects which are ready for internationalization. Beyond this, the numerous additional global societies who are also now partnering with ESCP has resulted in a global network of research-active colorectal surgeons which extends well into the thousands and is undoubtedly without parallel in any other branch of medicine or surgery.
Looking in a little further detail at the research components of the Paris conference, it is worth mentioning that after many years of delivering the very popular 'International Trials Results' session, we have decided to try something different this year. The world-first presentations of breaking results from major RCTs will now be presented within the plenary ‘Six Best’ sessions within the three major disease categorisations in the central part of each conference day. With no competing sessions occurring simultaneously this will allow all delegates the opportunity to hear these presentations and associated discussions with the lead investigators. We still have the always-stimulating New Trials symposium and will again offer a separate ‘Research Ideas Workshop’ as a drop-in session on Friday afternoon where members can informally discuss their fledgling research proposals and obtain advice on how to convert them into a successful study or trial. This may include guidance and input into research design, methodology, outcome measures, deliverability or routes to multicentre engagement.
Thomas Pinkney
Research Committee Chair
September 2025