Clinical trials at the India Hub:

FALCON was the first randomised control trial in which India recruited 800 patients. 9 hospitals participated in this study which included remote rural hospitals.

CHEETAH closed in India, with 21 hospitals participated and recruited 4000 patients.

Sub Studies within trials (Falcon & Cheetah) like TALON where video follow-ups were being validated and a total of 556 patients were recruited.

KIWI looking at the health resource costs of wound management and captured 322 patient records.

FEATHER was our qualitative research looking at barriers in follow for surgical patients.

CROCODILE was an India based study focusing on capturing Catastrophic Expenditure and barriers to referral pathways in patients suffering from Colon Cancers. This study is now been completed and may be a template of further studies on catastrophic expenditure in other cancers.

Malnutrition is a major public health issue in LMICs and is the subject of a United Nations 2025 Sustainable Development Goal.
The CRANE WP2 study aimed to assess nutritional status of patients undergoing cancer surgery in low- and middle-income countries.

The India hub studied Clinical Patterns and Treatment Outcomes in children with Abdominal Tuberculosis. The study is now in the process of preparing three papers on clinical aspects, community engagement and health economics. Our papers on clinical aspects and community engagement are to be presented at the British Association of Pediatric Surgeons Congress and the World Congress of Pediatric Surgery respectively.

The India hub at Ludhiana collaborated with the Global Surg team in the Philippines to work on STARFISH, a pump-priming study looking at the levels of stoma care and its perceptions amongst patients, caregivers and doctors.

PENGUIN is a perioperative Randomized Controlled Trial, which is a unique collaboration of anesthetists and surgeons working towards the reduction of post operative Pneumonia and Surgical Site Infections. Penguin is ongoing in 18 participating hospitals in India. This trial has opened up perioperative research at the India hub.

India centres are also participating in EAGLE which focuses on a quality improvement intervention to reduce anastomotic leak following right colectomy and ileocecal resection. India, presently has the largest number of participants outside of Europe

Cohort Studies:

1. GlobalSurg – CovidSurg Week: Determining the optimal timing for surgery following SARS-CoV-2 infection
2. Outcomes of Elective Cancer Surgery During The Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis: An International Multicentre, Observational Cohort Study (CovidSurg – Cancer)
3. CovidSurg 3 study assessing outcomes of surgery in Covid-19 Infection

Community Engagement Initiative

Community Engagement and Involvement is a way of working with local communities, to collaborate in identifying research priorities,  planning implementation strategies as well as dissemination of research outcomes.

The India hub has done some initial ground work on developing CEI through their pump priming study on tuberculosis.The framework of CEI in India has been developed and is now divided into rural and urban CEI setups.

The CEI network will be led in India by Dr Deepak Singh and the co-lead will be Dr Ritu Jain. Already a lot of ground work in meeting healthcare workers, community leaders and patient representatives have been involved in developing this exciting project.