CHILDREN'S CANCER - Research |
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| Research into new ways of
treating children's cancers is going on all the time, because as yet not all patients can
be cured. If early work suggests that a new treatment might be better than the standard
treatment, cancer doctors will carry out trials to assess it. A controlled clinical trial
is the only reliable way of testing a new treatment. There are basically three stages of clinical trials in children's cancer. The earliest stage, called phase I trials, are aimed at finding out about the side effects and the acceptable doses of new treatments. Phase II trials aim to find out how well the new treatment works. Phase III trials compare the new treatments with the standard one. The type of treatment a patient receives may be decided at random - typically, by a computer - and not by the doctor treating the patient. This is to avoid unintentional bias in the results of the trial. In some trials, one group of patients will receive the best standard treatment while another group will receive the new treatment, which may or may not prove to be better than the standard treatment. A treatment is better either because it is more effective against the tumour or because it is equally effective and has fewer unpleasant side effects. The reason your doctor would like your child to take part in a trial (or study as they are sometimes called) is because until the new treatment has been tested scientifically in this way it is impossible for doctors to know which is the best one to choose for their patients. It is very likely that the treatment being given to your child was tested for its effectiveness in a previous trial. Today's trial treatment may be tomorrow's standard treatment. Before any trial is allowed to take place it must have been approved by an ethics committee. Your doctor must have your informed consent (or, if the child is over 16 or considered old enough to understand, his consent) before entering your child into any clinical trial. Informed consent means that you know what the trial is about, you understand why it is being conducted and why your child has been invited to take part, and you appreciate exactly how your child will be involved. Even after agreeing to take part in a trial, you can still withdraw at any stage if you change your mind. If you choose not to take part in a trial, or you withdraw from a trial, your child will then receive the best standard treatment rather than the new one with which it is being compared. If you do choose to take part in a trial, it is important to remember that whatever treatment your child receives will have been carefully researched in preliminary studies, before it is fully tested in the trial. Whatever you decide will not affect your doctor's attitude towards you. |