key: cord-0886502-iahxivu8
authors: Watson, David I; Tan, Lorwai; Richards, Toby; Muralidharan, Vijayaragavan; Pockney, Peter
title: Trainee Led Collaboratives, Clinical Trials And New Opportunities In The Covid‐19 Era
date: 2020-07-08
journal: ANZ J Surg
DOI: 10.1111/ans.16156
sha: 703f09cf8c942e854b1d3b47fdb661403acea534
doc_id: 886502
cord_uid: iahxivu8

nan

Australian recruitment commenced in late January 2020 and has been excellent with nearly 150 patients recruited in the first 5 months at 4 hospitals, with further sites opening. It is expected that the Australian target will be met in the next few months, and this will ensure the initial target of 630 patients is met, thereby guaranteeing the success of the overall SUNRRISE trial.

Flexibility of the CTANZ platform has also enabled rapid responses to the changing environment, with participation in international trainee collaboratives evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on surgical outcomes. An example is CovidSurg, an international prospective audit of outcomes in patients infected with COVID-19 who undergo surgical interventions 2 .

This study builds on the platform of GlobalSurg 3 , an international collaborative that recently reported data from 10,745 patients in 58 countries 4 . Another study is COVER run by the Vascular trainees in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, to evaluate outcomes of vascular Accepted Article This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

surgery patients in the COVID-19 crisis. This study entails a tiered response looking at service provision, the changing presentation and outcome of patients and impact of the coronavirus disease itself on vascular thrombosis. CovidSurg Cancer represents another study which will determine the impact of COVID-19 on cancer outcomes 2 .

Permission to contribute data to these studies has been granted in record time across many hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, with research offices working hard to support trainees and their mentors to progress these studies. A positive consequence of COVID-19 seems to be a unified response to the crisis which is enabling a fresh approach to approvals for clinical research, and also surgeons seeking to improve clinical outcomes in this changing environment. It is hoped this approach to research approval will continue beyond the pandemic era! It is also hoped that all College training boards will consider collaborative research projects favourably and count contributions towards research training requirements, as well as selection into training programs. A move in this direction is the research point scheme for General Surgery training from 2022 which emphasises collaborative research.

The message is clear; CTANZ networks and the trainees who work together as one have been able to step up and respond to the crisis despite the restrictions that COVID-19 has imposed.

Trainees have demonstrated leadership and enthusiasm to contribute to practice changing research and prospective audit. We hope the surgical community recognises this and leverages these achievements to continue to build the CTANZ platform so that it can be utilised for trainees and surgeons across Australia and New Zealand undertaking research and audit in the future.

Mortality of emergency abdominal surgery in high-, middleand low-income countries

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