A SURGICAL team from Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has played a key role in a pioneering trial which could help improve quality of life for patients with rectal cancer. Surgery can often cure early-stage rectal cancer, but in the standard operation, the surgeon will remove the whole rectum, significantly impacting a patient’s quality of life, and often leaving patients with a permanent stoma or colostomy. Consultant colo-rectal surgeons Mark Steward and Jon Robinson have favoured a less-invasive approach for patients with early rectal cancer. They have been treating some of the Trust’s patients in this way since 2006, using a technique called TEMS (trans-anal endoscopic microsurgery).