Decoding Clinical Trial Terms: Clinical Trial Design
If you are considering enrolling in a clinical trial or reading clinical trial results, you may see unfamiliar terms about different types of clinical trials. This month, we begin a new series about different ways that clinical trials are set up as well as terms you may encounter when you are reading about trial results.
Click the links below to learn about phases of clinical trials, trial study design, and terms such as randomized, blinded, and open-label.
- Tigerlily Foundation: In Tigerlily’s December 2023 newsletter, they describe clinical trial phases and types of clinical trial design (randomized, single-blind, interventional, observational, etc.) (see pages 6-8)
- TOUCH The Black Breast Cancer Alliance (video): Dr. Monique Gary (breast surgeon), Ricki Fairley (TOUCH), Hayley Dinerman (Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation), and Melissa Berry (Cancer Fashionista) discuss aspects of clinical trial design (discussions about placebos in clinical trials at 23:21, clinical trial phases at 23:40, and double-blind trials at 26:10)
- News-Medical: In an open-label trial, everyone knows who got what treatment, and in a blinded trial, some groups (patients, doctors) do not know who got what treatment until the trial is over
- Breastcancer.org: Clinical trials can be blinded or non-blinded (also called open-label)