Should I Enter a Clinical Trial?

A Patient Reference Guide for Adults with a Serious or Life-Threatening Illness

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This Patient Reference Guide Summary highlights key issues covered in the full Guide, Should I Enter a Clinical Trial?, for adult patients who are thinking about enrolling in a clinical trial and their loved ones. Words that appear in bold are defined in the Glossary at the end. We provide checklists that may be useful during your discussions with physicians and loved ones about whether to enter a trial. A list of Web resources shows where you can find information about clinical trials that are open for enrollment and more information about various issues related to clinical trials. The full Guide and Summary take no position on whether one should enter a trial-that is a uniquely personal decision. Our hope is that patients consult the full Guide to support their decision making about enrolling in a trial so they can feel as confident as possible about their decision. We dedicate this Guide to the patients and their loved ones who are facing this important decision and to those who benefit us all by participating in a trial. More...

ECRI is solely responsible for the content of this Patient Reference Guide. The information in this Guide-including the conclusions-should be interpreted judiciously. This information is provided with the understanding that ECRI is not rendering any medical or legal advice or decisions on healthcare coverage or the provision of care to individual patients. This Patient Reference Guide includes a summary of ECRI's technical report that evaluated the available research evidence about (1) why patients enter clinical trials and (2) how well patients who receive medical care in a clinical trial do compared to patients treated for the same health condition outside a clinical trial. The information in this Guide is based on the available published scientific and medical literature as of June 2001. Scientific and medical knowledge evolves and may change over time as new research is published. You are urged to discuss the material in this Guide and the issues it raises with your medical doctors. This Guide does not include a complete description of the analytical methods ECRI uses to reach its conclusions on a particular topic. Those methods are fully described in ECRI's technical report.

If you are reading a print version of this Guide, you should also know that it is available online and you can download it for free. Go to www.ecri.org, click on "Patient Information," and then click on "Patient Reference Guides." The Guide is also available online at www.aahp.org. Additional hard copies are available in limited quantity through the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP).

Note: This Patient Reference Guide was funded by an unrestricted educational grant from Pfizer, Inc. to the American Association of Health Plans.