A Beginner's Guide To Clinical Trials
by Julia Gregory
Many oncology centers offer you the chance to experience a clinical trial. A clinical trial offered by an oncologist is essentially a research study that aims to treat cancer. As a patient interested in participating in a clinical trial, there are certain conditions which you must fulfill and criteria you must meet in order to be involved. This brief article will serve to explain a little bit about the process of going through a clinical trial.
Payment
By engaging in a clinical trial, there might be certain aspects of your treatment that are covered by health care providers, although you should consult with your specific provider to discover if this is the case. There are also numerous costs that will be covered by the sponsor of the trial, most notably the costs involving data management. Sometimes during a clinical trial, the sponsor may wind up covering the entirety of the patient's treatment costs, especially if the trial is experimental in nature.
Are Clinical Trials Entirely Experimental?
The answer to this question depends on the treatment in question. For example, the sponsor might be studying the effects of a cancer fighting drug and you are number one hundred in a line of patients that have used less advanced or effective versions of the drug that you are using. On the other hand, a sponsor may have just started testing the drug on humans and you belong to the first set of a focus group. The details of this matter will be discussed with you by the doctors in your oncology clinic.
Are Placebos Used?
In clinical trials that are used to treat cancer, it is not illegal to use a placebo on a patient. However, it is highly frowned upon by the medical community to use a placebo on a cancer patient, and therefore is something that rarely happens. If you agree to a clinical trial, it is likely that you will be treated with actual pharmaceuticals.
Benefits
A trial is considered beneficial when a patient shows signs of recovery. The primary benefit of engaging in a clinical trial is that these radical new treatments are aimed to help with cancer treatment more efficiently, more thoroughly, and more quickly than older treatments. If the drug works, chances are, it will work better than standard care.
Clinical trials by their nature are experimental, and if you engage in a clinical trial, you are essentially agreeing to a risk that the treatment might not work. However, the benefits of a positive clinical trial are quite strong and lead many people to accept the demands of a clinical trial.
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About Me
The decision to move one of my parents into assisted living was one of the most difficult I have ever made. I had extreme feelings of guilt that led to me being at the facility with my parent practically around the clock. It took a few months before I realized that I could not let my own life fall apart from the guilt I was feeling. I also learned that my parent was fine without me constantly hovering around. Since that time, I have had several friends express similar feelings of guilt. I started this blog to help others in the same situation understand not only their feelings about assisted living, but those of their parents.