Who is Eligible to Participate in a Clinical Trial?
A. Anyone who meets the medical eligibility requirements can participate. U.S. citizens and permanent residents are given first priority. Because patient safety is of the highest concern, the NCI principal investigator and the research team make the final decision about enrolling a patient during the screening visit.
Each study has its own guidelines for who can participate, called eligibility criteria. To ensure the strongest results, researchers want study participants to be alike in key ways. Examples of eligibility criteria for a treatment trial might be a particular type and stage of cancer, age, gender, or previous treatments. The eligibility criteria are included in the study plan. To find out if you are eligible for a particular study, talk to your doctor or the doctor or nurse in charge of enrolling patients for the study. Where are trials conducted? If you were to participate in a clinical trial, you might do so at a large cancer center, a university hospital, or your local medical center or physician’s office. The trial may include participants at one or two highly specialized centers or it may involve hundreds of locations at the same time. You would participate in the trial under the guidance of a team including your physician and other health professionals, who would report your exper
