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Patient Willingness to Enroll in Cancer Clinical Trials When Sites Return to Prepandemic Status—Reply | Oncology | JAMA Oncology | ÌÇÐÄvlog

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Comment & Response
April 1, 2021

Patient Willingness to Enroll in Cancer Clinical Trials When Sites Return to Prepandemic Status—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), Washington, DC
  • 2Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington
JAMA Oncol. 2021;7(6):940. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2021.0387

In Reply We thank Bayle and colleagues for their interest in our survey study showing an association of the COVID-19 pandemic with lower willingness of patients with cancer and survivors to participate in cancer clinical trials.1 Enrollment of a patient into a cancer clinical trial can be impeded or prevented by systemic, clinical, or patient-related barriers. Our previous research2 showed that systemic and clinical barriers (eg, lack of a relevant clinical trial, failure to screen a patient, patient ineligibility owing to strict inclusion/exclusion criteria) represent the largest barriers to enrollment. During the pandemic, site closures clearly increased the magnitude of these barriers. Our intent with this research1 was to isolate the association of one of the multiple domains of patient barriers to enrollment, namely willingness to enroll, as no evidence had been generated to address whether willingness had changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, in our sample, 50.9% (473 of 933) of respondents were in active cancer treatment at the time of the survey, and the remaining were within 5 years of diagnosis or treatment, indicating that they broadly reflect patients considering the risks and benefits of trial participation.

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