The Surgery for Cancer with Option of Palliative Care Expert (SCOPE) Trial is a randomized controlled trial of a pre- and post-operative specialist palliative care intervention for patients undergoing major abdominal surgery for cancer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. We will enroll 236 patients and randomly assign half of them to meet with a palliative care doctor or nurse practitioner before and after surgery. The primary outcome of the study is the patients’ physical and functional quality of life 90 days after their operations. We will additionally assess their overall quality of life at 90 days post-operatively, their post-traumatic stress symptoms at 180 days post-operatively, the amount of time they spend in the hospital or other healthcare facilities during the first 90 days after the operation, and their overall survival. We hypothesize that the palliative care intervention will improve these outcomes.

The SCOPE Trial has received funding from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging. It is registered on clinicaltrials.gov. Details about the procedures and protocol of the SCOPE Trial have been published in the open-access journal Trials.