Benefits and Risks

All clinical trials have some risks and benefits.

Benefits include:
 
  • Participants play an active role in their own health care
 
  • Participants receive medical treatments before they are available to the public and these treatments may be more effective than what is currently available
 
  • Participants receive expert medical care, including regular and thorough medical examinations
 
  • Participants can help others by contributing to medical research, by improving diagnosis, treatment, survival and quality of life to many individuals.
 
Risks include:
 
  • Unpleasant and potentially serious side effects to the experimental treatment.
 
  • The experimental treatment may not be effective or may not work as hoped
 
  • Clinical trials may require large amounts of time, including trips to the study site, more treatments, hospital stays or complex dosage requirements.
 
Some important points that should be made clear by the investigators are:
 
  • The experimental treatment is research and not therapy and the reason for conducting the trial is to determine whether or not it is safe and/or beneficial
 
  • The current standard of treatment for spinal cord injury will be provided regardless of the subjects decision to participate in the research study; and
 
  • A well designed clinical trial will include a control and therefore participants may not receive the experimental treatment at all.