Things to consider
If you have been diagnosed with cancer, joining a clinical trial may be an option for you. After thinking about your options, talk to people who are close to you and to members of your medical team. This section has information you can use when thinking about your treatment choices and making decisions.
After reading about the pros & cons, you may want to talk about clinical studies with your doctor. You can use this discussion guide to help you talk with your doctor.
As a treatment option, a clinical trial has possible benefits as well as drawbacks. You may want to discuss the following points with your doctor and the people close to you.
- Clinical trials offer high-quality care. If you are in a randomized study (a study where people are assigned to a group by chance) and do not receive the new treatment being tested, you will receive the best-known standard treatment. Everything we know indicates that both approaches should be the most effective treatments available.
- Access to promising drugs, medical devices, or treatment approaches before the general public
- If a new treatment is proven to work and you are taking it, you may be among the first to benefit.
- Free or subsidized health care for the duration of the trial
- Expert medical care at a leading health care facility
- Close monitoring of your health care and side effects
- The chance to help others and improve treatment for your type of cancer.
- There is no way for doctors, scientists, or patients to know for sure whether the current treatment or the new treatment is more effective. The goal of the study is to discover the best treatment.
- New treatments may have side effects that doctors do not expect or that are worse than those of standard treatment.
- Even if a new treatment has benefits, it might not work for you. This is also true for standard treatments.
- Health insurance and managed care providers do not always cover all patient care costs in a study. What they cover varies by plan and by study. To find out in advance what costs are likely to be paid in your case, check with your insurance company and the billing staff at your hospital or doctor’s office.
Before joining a cancer research study, there are questions you may want to ask. You can also print these questions and take them with you for your next visit. However, be aware that even the most caring doctors sometimes:
- May not have all the time you need to answer your questions in one visit.
- Use language or talk about medical procedures you don’t understand.
- Don’t have all the answers you need.
If you don’t get all the answers right away, ask your doctor if you can take more time to make a decision about your treatment. You and your doctor can work together to find answers before you make a choice about joining a research study. No matter what your doctor recommends, the choice to join or not to join a study is yours.
- Will I have to pay for any of the treatments or tests?
- What costs will my health insurance cover?
- Who can help answer any questions from my health insurance company or health plan?
- Will there be extra travel or childcare costs while I’m in the study?
- Who is paying for the study?
- How could the trial affect my daily life?
- How often will I have to come to the hospital or clinic?
- Will I have to travel long distances to take part? Is there somewhere close to home where I could receive this treatment?
- What are my other treatment choices, including standard treatments?
- How does the treatment I would receive in this trial compare with the other treatment choices?
- How could being in this study affect my daily life? Are these issues different from what I would experience if I chose the standard treatment?
- Can I talk to other people in the study?
- Will I have to travel out of the city or state?
- Will I have to stay in the hospital for my treatment? How long?