What do I have to do to enter a clinical trial?

If you decide to enter a clinical trial you should, first of all, discuss with your health care provider the risks and the benefits that you are exposed to by undergoing an experimental treatment. Your doctor can help you find a suitable clinical trial for you.

You should also know that every clinical trial has a series of criteria that patients must meet in order to be accepted. The best way to find out if you are eligible for a certain clinical trial is to contact the director of the study.

Patients must be aware of the fact that there are other ways of treatment and that entering a clinical trial does not mean that you are a poor candidate for surgery but it is possible for your doctor to not want you to try multimodal therapy. Still, you should take into consideration the fact that standard treatment has been proved to have a higher rate of reducing the tumors than experimental treatment. Therefore, doctors recommend that you enter a clinical trial after trying a combination of surgery and chemotherapy.

Comments from doctors

Patients who had no results with conventional therapies and have no other treatment options are usually eligible for clinical trials.
Patients do not have to wait to enter a clinical trial. A lot of trials about mesothelioma and lung cancer recruit people at any time.
As mesothelioma is a rare disease, there are not many people entering clinical trials. Patients should talk to their doctors to find out if they are eligible to join one.

We wanted a resource where people who are looking for better help can find it, because one of the issues that I have found is that the diagnosis takes a little bit, some people don’t know if they are diagnosed or not. This is something that it is important enough, that is why I wanted to put the information together.