Why do more patients not enroll in clinical trials?

[RPKadmin]

Why are 95% of children with cancer enrolled in clinical trials, while only 5% of adults with cancer enroll in trials? There are many different reasons including the fact that cancer is much less common in children. Efforts to increase these numbers in adults through the use of websites, such as ClinicalConnection.com, are hoping to increase these numbers through online education and database information.

You may read the full article at http://www.philly.com/philly/health_...tml?page=1&c=y

Your comments are always welcome.

[stdogp]

It is very difficult to qualify for a clinical trial. Their criteria is critical to their study and if you don't meet all their criteria you are disqualified. I have advanced lung cancer and look for a trial that I can be in on a regular basis, but in each trial, so far, I have not found even one that I meet ALL their criteria.

[TrialsGuru]

Stdogp, that can be a common criticism of clinical trials and a very common experience. The pharma companies that run these trials typically make the inclusion/exclusion criteria very narrow in order to only allow those individuals into the clinical trial that have the highest chance of benefiting from the therapy. Only enrolling those individuals that have the highest chance for benefiting also makes it easier for the drug to be seen as effective in a significant portion of the patients, which is crucial if the drug is to be approved by the FDA. Once the drug is approved for use in a very narrow range of patients it is then frequently used in more inclusive clinical trials to determine just how broad of a patient base may benefit. Please continue speaking with clinics and doctors about the clinical trials you find, hopefully you will end up being eligible for one. As always, you can search nearly all of the 120,000 clinical trials currently available in the US at www.clinicalconnection.com/searchstudies.aspx.

Thanks for posting!

Dr Hope in Texas for the guy with lung cancer.