Popular perception to the contrary, cancer patients who participate in clinical trials may not actually have better treatment outcomes than those who don’t take part in such trials, a new study says.This is not to say patients are worse off, but experts don’t really know one way or the other. “That’s a question that can’t be answered,” says Dr. Joel Horovitz, director of general surgery at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. Somehow, though, the idea that patients in trials benefit has become part of the common lore. “A lot of people in oncology have said that you’re better off being in a clinical trial, either randomized or single arm, than being treated outside a clinical trial,” says Dr. Steven Joffe, senior author of the study. Joffe is a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Children’s Hospital Boston, and Harvard Medical School, all in Boston.The research appears in the Jan. 24 issue of The Lancet.
