Clinical Trials

What Is A Clinical Trial?
A clinical trial is any research study that determines how an intervention (e.g. medicines, devices, lifestyle changes) affect human health. The effects of those interventions are evaluated to determine whether or not they have a positive or negative effect on health-related outcomes such as your lung function or quality of life. Click here to learn more about how clinical trials help those with respiratory diseases.

Why Are Clinical Trials Important?
Clinical trials are a very important step in discovering new treatments for diseases, as well as new ways to detect, diagnose, and reduce the risk of those diseases. Without clinical trial participants, the diagnostic tools, courses of treatments, and other medical interventions that researchers are working hard to develop could not be tested to determine how well they really work.

Research at the Rehabilitation Clinical Trials Center at the Lundquist Institute, Torrance, CA
Research at RCTC partially supported by PERF, and has achieved major contributions to the understanding of how pulmonary rehabilitation helps patients with respiratory diseases, especially those with COPD. You can read more about their major achievements in the field of respiratory medicine here.

Why Join a Clinical Trial?
Thanks to patient participation in clinical trials, researchers and medical service providers are making continuous advances in the diagnosis, care, and treatment of pulmonary disease. But why should you join one? For many reasons:

  • Let’s face it, the most important is your own health and wellbeing. Many clinical trials require multiple clinical tests, which gives you detailed results about your health.
  • Your healthcare provider might be able to make use of your clinical trial test results for your healthcare.
  • If you are eligible, you might get access to the latest treatments at no cost to you, in a safe and carefully-monitored way.
  • To potentially help others with the same medical condition as you or a loved one, by being part of the development of new clinical tests or treatments.
  • You should be aware that many clinical trials reimburse you for your travel and time for participating.
  • To meet others with similar medical issues.
  • Or, even, simply as an incentive to get you out of the house!

 

The Department of Health and Human Services has a useful set of short informational videos about participation in clinical trials and how research volunteers are protected: https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/education-and-outreach/about-research-participation/informational-videos

If you are able, we urge you to participate in a clinical trial near you.

How do I Find a Clinical Trial Near Me?
If you live in Southern California, contact the Rehabilitation Clinical Trials Center at the Lundquist Institute in Torrance, CA to see if there are clinical trials for which you are eligible:

To search for clinical trials in the USA use the ClinicalTrials.gov website.

To find a study near you:

  1. Navigate to https://clinicaltrials.gov/
  2. For Status, select All Studies
  3. For Condition or Disease, enter your disease of interest e.g. COPD
  4. For Other Terms, you can enter other words to search for e.g. the name of a drug you are interested in, or leave it blank
  5. For Country, select United States
  6. It is optional to enter your State, City, and how far you are willing to travel using the Distance options. The more you enter the more specific the search will be. Alternatively leave these fields blank if you want to search all US based studies
  7. Click Search

The Pulmonary Education and Research Foundation (PERF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that was formed from a passion to improve the outlook for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), through research into pulmonary rehabilitation and other patient-centered therapies. Over time, this purpose has adapted to include other diseases where shortness-of-breath and exercise intolerance are hallmark symptoms.

PERF publishes a free blog, and responds to reader’s questions and concerns, for those who experience breathing difficulties or exercise limitations.

For more information visit us on the web at https://perf2ndwind.org/.