A small study of children with cancer enrolled in therapeutic clinical research trials shows that they don’t fully understand what physicians and parents tell them about their participation, nor do they feel they are genuinely involved in the choice of whether to take part.
The study, led by Yoram Unguru, an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, is published online today, March 29, in the journal Pediatrics.
While an estimated 70 percent of young cancer patients participate in clinical trials during their treatment, more than half of the 37 children who were interviewed for the study did not know or recall that their treatment was considered experimental or part of research, the investigators report.
And out of a subset of 22 children, 19 of them did not understand their doctors’ explanation at the time they agreed to take part in the clinical trial.
In addition, irrespective of age, every child interviewed with a 69-part questionnaire said he wanted to be involved in decision making about his care and participation in research. Permission to participate in Unguru’s study was sought first from the parents and adult caretakers, and then from the children.
Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics states that doctors should ascertain that children comprehend information they are given about their treatments. In conjunction with the Belmont Report—a core historical document that lays out ethical principles and guidelines—Unguru says that the onus is on physician-investigators to verify that childhood patients understand.
However, it turns out that little rigorous research has been done to determine just how much minors with cancer actually understand about the treatment trials, Unguru says.
When doctors diagnose a child with cancer, he says, they often know about clinical research projects that hold promise for treatment and ask their patients and parents if they would like to participate. Typically, physician-investigators first ask the adult decision-maker, then turn to the child. Unguru says that some doctors are very thorough in this process, while others aren’t.
The study is the result of face-to-face interviews with cancer patients ages 7 to 18 years and is believed to be the first examination of children’s understanding of—and preference for—involvement in research. Unguru says that past studies on children’s comprehension of research participation have relied largely on hypothetical cases based on surveys of healthy, older adolescents.
Unguru acknowledged that age—or perhaps even the young patients’ health, or state of shock and confusion in the face of a cancer diagnosis—might have made it impossible for some of them to fully grasp the concepts of clinical research. But, he insists, that doesn’t mean doctors shouldn’t at least try to do better.
Given the relatively few number of children in the United States who are diagnosed with cancer every year (12,500), Unguru says that the results of the small sample size were consistent and useful as a pilot study and basis for further research.
The study’s co-authors, both at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., are Anne Sill, in the Office of Biostatistics and Informatics, and Naynesh Kamani, medical director of the Office for the Protection of Human Subjects.