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Your Doctor and the Clinical TrialIs a referral from my physician required for participation in a clinical trial?No. In order to participate in a clinical trial you will be evaluated by the medical staff conducting the study to make sure you are eligible for the study. Once the details of the trial have been explained, it is up to you to decide if you wish to participate or not. Patients are usually encouraged to discuss participation with their own physician, as well as family. Can clinical trial participants still see their regular doctor?Yes. Clinical trials do not replace normal health care. In fact, the regular doctors of trial participants should be updated regularly by the trial coordinators. What happens to the trial data?Throughout the course of a study, researchers collect data in order to find out how well the treatment they are investigating is working. At the end of the study all of the data is carefully evaluated to decide what the next step for the treatment will be. For treatments that have completed phase I or II trials, researchers will decide if the treatments should move into the next phase trial, or if they should halt testing because the treatment is not effective or safe. When a phase III trial ends, the data is evaluated in order to determine if it is more effective than the standard treatment it was compared to in the trial. Results from some studies are presented at conferences or published in scientific or medical journals. Before publication, the results will usually undergo a process of peer review, where experts will critique the study to make sure its analysis and conclusions are accurate. Once a treatment has been proven safe and effective it may become the new standard of care, or another treatment option for physicians to consider. In this way clinical trials help to bring better interventions for prevention, for treatment, or for detection and diagnosis to patients. The content on this page was written by Dr. Marc Engelsgjerd and Michael D'Agostino of Veritas Medicine. |
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