Are There Lung Cancer Clinical Trials Studying Veterans?
Are There Lung Cancer Clinical Trials Studying Veterans? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Are veterans with lung cancer under study in clinical trials? Expert Dr. Michael Kelley from Duke University School of Medicine discusses benefits of clinical trials, an early stage non-small cell lung cancer clinical trial, and proactive patient advice about clinical trial access.
[ACT]IVATION TIP
“…if you have a diagnosis of cancer you’re facing and you’re getting your care from the VA, please ask your provider if there’s a clinical trial that might be appropriate for you. That might be at the VA, or that might be somewhere else and both of those would be appropriate to consider to understand what the advantages and disadvantages would be for you, including being able to improve the knowledge that would help future people who also face the same diagnosis.”
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatifeld:
Dr. Kelley, can you speak to ongoing clinical trials and research specifically for veterans, or are there any clinical trials or research studies that are available that focus on lung cancer treatments specifically tailored to veterans?
Dr. Michael Kelley:
Yes. So we’re very interested in ensuring that veterans have access to all components of clinical care. And for many individuals who have a diagnosis of cancer and enrollment in a clinical trial is considered appropriate and part of standard clinical care to consider. So there are some studies which are designed by VA for veterans. There’s one ongoing now that is comparing surgery with radiation for early stage non-small cell lung cancer. That study is going to, I think, inform the entire country and maybe the entire world about what the differences are in terms of the outcomes and tolerability of those two treatments.
They’ve both been around quite some time now, and they’re used extensively throughout the world, but they’ve never been compared directly. So the veteran population is helping to answer a very important question, and it is designed specifically for veterans. The population of veterans who have cancer, in particular lung cancer, who are enrolled in VA, tend to have more other diseases in addition to the lung cancer, so more diabetes, hypertension, heart disease.
And when initial drugs or other treatments get approved, they’re oftentimes used in a very select population that don’t have any other diseases. They’re healthy people with cancer, and that means that we don’t know necessarily whether it’s safe or effective to use those treatments in people that have what are called comorbidities or other diseases.
And so veterans can oftentimes not have their treatment informed by the medical studies that have been completed to an exacting degree. So what we’ve done is to design some studies that are specifically for veterans to expand on that knowledge and make sure that we understand what is safe and effective in veterans. So my activation tip is that, if you have a diagnosis of cancer that you’re facing and you’re getting your care from the VA, please ask your provider if there’s a clinical trial that might be appropriate for you.
That might be at the VA, or that might be somewhere else and both of those would be appropriate to consider to understand what the advantages and disadvantages would be for you, including being able to improve the knowledge that would help future people who also face the same diagnosis.
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