Written by admin on 2009-03-12T06:14:09+0000">March 12, 2009 – 6:14 am
Why Doesn’t Everyone Participate in Clinical Trials?
There are practical reasons why many people do not participate in clinical trials:
•People are unaware of the availability and benefits of trials.
•Trials have limited participation; there may be no space in ongoing trials for a person’s particular cancer situation.
•People may not qualify for trials applicable to their type of cancer, because of concurrent medical conditions, age, location family constraints.
•Certain kinds of clinical trials offer little or no therapeutic benefit.
What Are the Downsides of Clinical Trials?
There are some potential disadvantages to your participating in a clinical trial:
• Doctors have less experience working with new treatments than with standard, established ones.
•You may lose an opportunity for a dependable response from standard therapy if you pursue a clinical trial of therapy that proves to be less successful than standard therapy.
•Clinical trials require an investment in terms of your time, energy, and testing to comply with the required follow-up during and after treatment.
• Hospitalization may be required for some treatments.
• Trials can add to the emotional stress of not knowing exact which treatment you are getting. As was discussed above, some patients receive a placebo (e.g., an inactive sugar pill) instead of the experimental treatment in placebo-controlled studies. In other studies, you randomly receive either standard treatment or the new treatment. Despite the reassurance that you are receiving treatment that has an anticancer effect, not knowing exactly what treatment you are getting can be stressful.
•Some people feel like “a number” instead of an individual human being.
Although clinical trials increase your potential options, they are not for everyone.
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