Are you considering becoming a part of a clinical trial sometime soon? You might have heard of people getting involved with these in the past. Clinical trials allow doctors to test out some new type of medicine, treatment plan, or device. If you wish to know more about clinical trials from a patient’s perspective, then you should keep reading.
There Are Different Phases
There are different phases when you’re participating in a clinical trial. The first phase involves doctors giving a new treatment or medicine to a few people to test whether it’s safe or not. During this time, researchers learn about side effects, safe dosage amounts, and the best ways of administering the medicine or treatment. Eventually, phase two kicks in and doctors look for data to see just how well the method that they’re testing works to treat specific illnesses.
Phase three involves doctors comparing the new treatment or medicine with standard treatment options. They’ll also try to see if changing the dosages changes the effectiveness of the treatment. Eventually, they’ll start testing the treatment on larger groups of diverse people to see how it works on different segments of the population.
Phase four starts up when they decide to start giving the treatment to average patients who have agreed to try the new drug or treatment out. This will involve looking for side effects again and determining how well the treatment option works long-term. Once this phase has been reached, the FDA will approve companies to start marketing the drugs that they’re testing.
Is Participating in Clinical Trials Beneficial?
Some participate in clinical trials because they want to help advance treatment methods. Others will turn to clinical trials in hopes of treating conditions that aren’t being treated well enough by existing treatment options. Patients who participate in clinical trials will have decreased medical costs, too, and this is appealing to those who are looking to save money. There might be some risk involved in participating in these trials since the medications and treatment plans are still being tested, but patients are aware of that before they sign up.