Clinical Trials
Latest articles on Clinical Trials
While kidney cancer may be rare compared to other cancers, an estimated 51,000 new cases will be diagnosed in the US in 2007 and nearly 13,000 people will die from the disease, which is highly resistant to traditional chemotherapy drugs.
Each year, hundreds of clinical tests are conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin, all dependent on the participation of volunteers. But before any tests proceed, they are screened carefully to ensure that maximum safeguards are in place.
Choosing to participate in a clinical trial is an important personal decision. It is often helpful to talk to a physician, family members, or friends about deciding to join a trial.
As clinicians, we want to "trust our instincts." But refusing to trust the technology might be just as harmful as blindly ignoring an improbable clinical finding.
She had undergone several operations, each more involved than the last. The cancer was making it more difficult for her to speak and was worsening her pain. Her health, however, was otherwise excellent. What should she do now?
The good news is that most breast cancers today are diagnosed early, when they are most treatable, says Alonzo Walker, MD, Chief of the Division of General Surgery and Professor of Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
"Our whole goal is to protect the community volunteers who come here to the Medical College and sign up for research," says Maggi Cage, PhD, Director of the Human Research Protection Office.
Life-saving cancer therapies can impair the fertility of women who still want children, but new techniques are providing some hope that female fertility can resume after treatment, according to Gloria M. Halverson, MD.
The Medical College has been at the forefront of research in the use of gallium nitrate to treat lymphoma. "In the future, we intend to combine gallium nitrate with other chemotherapeutic drugs in the hope that this will improve the results of treatment and increase the cure rate in this disease," says Principal Investigator Christopher Chitambar, MD.
A leading researcher in the field of LED treatment, pediatric neurologist, and medical officer in the US Naval Reserves, Dr. Harry Whelan discusses new technologies being applied in places like the Children's Hospital cancer unit.
It should take some strong evidence to convince us to recommend Spiral CT scans as a cancer screening test.
Screening tests can find colorectal cancer early, when treatment works best. When colorectal cancer is detected in the earliest stage of the disease, the survival rate is 96%.
In order to maintain credibility, several journals are taking steps to require that investigators more clearly reveal the relationships that investigators have with the drug industry.
Research into diseases and treatments is constantly being conducted by scientists, and reported on by the media. Understanding some of the vocabulary of medical research can help you make sense of research findings.
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