SWOG S1820: Altering Intake, Managing Symptoms for bowel dysfunction in survivors of Rectal Cancer (The AIMS-RC intervention trial).

Objective: To describe the study protocol of SWOG S1820, a trial of the Altering Intake, Managing Symptoms intervention for bowel dysfunction in survivors of Rectal Cancer (AIMS-RC).

Design: SWOG S1820 is a multi-site, randomized trial of 94 post-treatment survivors of rectal cancer, comparing the intervention and attention control arms.

Setting: Affiliated institutions of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported National Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) and the National Clinical Trial Network (NCTN).

Participants: Survivors of rectal cancer who are between 6 and 24 months after treatment completion.

Intervention: AIMS-RC is a 17-week, 10 session telephone coaching program to help survivors of rectal cancer track their symptoms and improve their diets for better health and bowel function. It includes telephone-based coaching, resource manual, and personalized text/email messaging for motivation in between the telephone sessions.

Main Outcome Measures: Bowel function, low anterior resection syndrome score, quality of life (QOL), dietary quality, motivation, self-efficacy, positive/negative affect, feasibility, adherence, retention, acceptability.

Analysis: Thirty-seven participants per arm (74 total) provide 80% power to detect this 0.5 standard deviation effect size, based on a two-sample -test with a 1-sided alpha = 0.1. A total of 94 randomized participants will be accrued to account for 7% ineligibility and 15% attrition at 6 months.