The best way to find a clinical trial that is right for you is to talk to your healthcare team. And not all cancer centers offer clinical trials. That’s because not all providers who treat cancer offer clinical trials. Many people say they have never been told about clinical trials as treatment options. You should always feel free to ask any questions you have before you enroll in a trial, and while you are participating in the trial. It is a choice you make with your doctor and health care team. You can also ask about what being in the trial means in terms of extra doctor appointments, hospital stays and procedures and any costs that you might not be covered.ĭeciding whether or not to be on a clinical trial is more than just signing the forms. You can ask your doctor or the protocol coordinator any questions you have about the treatment, side effects and potential outcomes. Informed consent is a formal process that involves a lot of paperwork. This means that your doctor explains the trial, its potential benefits and risks and the procedures it involves. Informed ConsentĪnyone who enrolls in a clinical trial, of any kind, goes through informed consent. Once this is done, doctors, researchers, nurses and other health care team members are ready to work together with patients in a clinical trial. Today, participants are often asked to describe their experience, which is known as patient reported outcomes.īefore any drug is used with human beings, there is a great amount of work done in the laboratory to know how the drug works and understand the likely side effects. During any clinical trial, researchers track all of the side effects, or adverse events, that happen to the people in the study. The safety of a new drug or treatment is also very important in deciding if, how and when to use a new treatment. Have lower rates of recurrence after their primary treatment - meaning the cancers do not come back.Have better quality of life with fewer side effects or symptoms of their disease.Have longer periods of time when their cancers shrink or do not grow or spread to new places in the body (disease free or progression free survival).Clinical trials establish the effectiveness and safety of new cancer treatments. A way to be involved in the frontlines of research to advance cancer careĪ clinical trial is a research study to find out if a new treatment provides better outcomes than the existing standard of care - the best available known treatment.An opportunity to help future cancer patients and contribute to research.A chance to benefit from a new therapy or approach.A proven way for people facing cancer to get high quality treatment and care.In many instances, the only way for a patient to get a new or experimental approach before it is approved for general use.The only way to find out if a new drug or treatment is better than the existing standard of care.The engine that drives progress in cancer treatment.David Carbone, MD, Ohio State University What is a clinical trial? I want to emphasize that being in a clinical trial is how you get access to the next generation of cancer treatment. “The treatments we use today were discovered, tested and first made available to patients in clinical trials - and the drugs that are the future of cancer treatment are in trials today. While many trials focus on late stage disease, there are also trials to prevent cancer, improve early diagnosis, stop the cancer from coming back, reduce side effects or improve quality of life. There are clinical trials for every type of cancer. There are trials that involve new approaches to surgery and radiation therapy. This can be a new drug, or combination of drugs or a different way of using established therapies. Clinical trials for cancer are research studies that compare the most effective known treatment for a specific type or stage of cancer with a new approach.
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