Why Should I Consider a Clinical Trial?
Your goal is to find the best treatment available for your melanoma whenever you make a treatment decision with your doctor. Clinical trials aim to find new treatments that can help people with melanoma live longer and improve the quality of their daily life. Clinical trials can offer you access to new melanoma treatments and also the opportunity to improve the understanding of melanoma and its treatment options; all while receiving high quality, patient-centred care.
The Aim of Clinical Trials
Trials aim to find out if a new treatment or procedure for melanoma:
- is safe
- is effective
- has any known or unknown side effects
- works better than the currently used treatment or procedure
- affects your quality of life
There are two main types of clinical trials or studies:
Interventional trials aim to find out more about a particular intervention, or treatment for melanoma. Often people taking part are split into different groups, so that the research team can compare the results.
This process often uses a computer system that will select at random to put people into specific groups, called randomisation. This can be dividing people into the group who will receive the new treatment or procedure (investigational group) versus people who will receive no treatment (placebo) or the current standard treatment option (control group).
Observational studies aim to find out what happens to people in different situations, or who are receiving different interventions, tests or treatment. These studies don’t affect what treatments people have and the people taking part aren’t split into treatment groups. The people taking part will just be observed in the situation that they are currently in.