Volatile Anaesthesia and Perioperative Outcomes Related to Cancer: the VAPOR-C Trial

VAPOR-C is a pragmatic, event-driven, randomised controlled trial, with a single blind 2x2 factorial design for sevoflurane/propofol and for intravenous lidocaine infusion / no lidocaine infusion. This trial is designed to test for superiority in disease free survival (DFS) of propofol (total intravenous anaesthesia -TIVA) over sevoflurane (inhalational volatile anaesthesia) and intravenous lidocaine over no lidocaine in patients undergoing surgery for colorectal or non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The combination of two cancer types will help address the need to demonstrate the effects of anaesthetic technique across cancers to inform generalisable anaesthesia guidelines. Both NSCLC and colorectal cancer are important for this study due to high incidence rate, many longer-term survivors, and importantly the high risk of local or distant recurrence despite complete surgical resection. In addition, the study will collect additional data in a nested cohort related to the exploratory objectives. The study aims to recruit 3,500 patients in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States and Europe.