Medical Trial - GP Referral?
 

Hi All,

My father in law has just been given a leaflet by his GP to go for a "bone scan".

It turns out that it is for a medical trial with synexus testing drugs for osteoporosis.

My father in law is pushing 80 and got confused with the information given to him and was under the impression that the scan was needed due to a problem he has.

Is this standard practice?

Thoughts?

If your FatherinLaw wasn't made clear what the scan was for by his GP I'd have a word to find out if a) the GP had tried to make it clear but your FinL was just confused or b) the GP was *pushing* the trial for some reason and you thus have reason to change GPs.

Dave

Write to the surgery saying that your f-i-l would like to change GPs as part of a "patient trial"?

dl

cheers.

I wasn't aware that GP's did the whole medical referral thing.

FnL was definitely NOT aware that it was a medical trial he'd been signed up for. He thought it was because his dr thought he might have osteoporosis / bone cancer.

Imagine how upset he was until we found out what really was going on.

I'd be pretty pissed off if that happened to an older relative of mine (if there were any left :D). I doubt if anyone takes account of fact that some older folk might be confused by the leaflet which was probably just an invitation to take part?

You could write to secretary at Practice and probably get a letter of apology but that's about all.

dl

Not much point doing that.

Had a chat with him tonight - He's cancelled the appointment & will move GP's on Monday.

the doctor has run out of ideas to the cure for your father in laws problem,
as synexus are a drug trail company base in reading just off the motorway.
ive been on their books for twos years now going back every 12 weeks for a review of the drugs.
they are given the drugs by bigger companys to try out for different problems and they dont know which is which as one is always a placebo.

It is possible the GP is a scoundrel. It is more likely there are crossed wires and it would be worth clarifying this first.

There are advantages to being part of a clinical trial for the individual. It is also important to recruit old people to clinical trials to answer important clinical questions about therapy. Too many questions remain about treating the elderly as they have often previously been excluded from clinical trials.

It is possible that if you obtained the facts that this could be rather different to how it appears. Clinical trials have incredibly tight regulation and ethical standards, and the standards for informed consent are very high. If these have not been met, then for sure, take action.

There may also be a deal where non-trial patients can get access to DEXA scans. This may be something valuable that a snap decision is going to lose.

I've had had the scan anyway- which takes about two minutes - I've had a couple- and then reviewed the situation re entering into any trial afterwards - play them at their own game.

I think it's a simple mix-up somewhere.

I ran clinical trials as a "Clinical Academic" in a Dental Hospital and they are *very* tightly controlled ! Ethics committe's, Informed consent, Data protection, Blinding...........absolute nightmare from my point of view but emphasis on patient safety and confidentiallity.

Some trials can be usefull as they can allow an element of queue jumping both for treatment and investigations.

Unlikely that there's anything underhand going on.

Shaun