Clinical Trials

Studies of promising new treatments are known as clinical trials. A clinical trial is done only when there is some reason to believe that the new treatment may be of value to the patient. Treatments used in clinical trials are often found to have real benefits. The main questions the researchers want to answer are:

• Is this treatment helpful?
• Does it work better than the one we're now using?
• What side effects does it cause?
• Do the benefits outweigh the side effects?
• Which patients are most likely to find this treatment helpful?