Thirty years after the MASTER trial began recruitment, ANZCA CTN reflects on its legacy, honouring the trial’s impact on clinical practice and the growth of a world-leading clinical trials network.
July 2025 marked 30 years since recruitment began recruitment for Australia’s first major multicentre anaesthesia trial, the MASTER trial. This landmark clinical trial had its origins in the late 1980's, when Perth anaesthetist Associate Professor John Rigg partnered with clinical epidemiologist Professor Konrad Jamrozik. Together they developed the Multicentre AuSTralian Study of EpiduRal Anaesthesia in High-risk Surgery (MASTER) trial, the first National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)-funded multicentre randomised clinical trial (RCT) in Australia led by anaesthetist researchers. Key collaborators included Professor Paul Myles, Professor Philip Peyton and Associate Professor Brendan Silbert. The ANZCA Foundation also provided foundational funding, establishing its significant role in supporting large RCTs which continues to this day.
Published in The Lancet in 2002, the MASTER trial tested whether epidural analgesia could improve safety in major surgery, a widely held belief at the time. A total of 915 high-risk patients undergoing major abdominal surgery were randomised to receive either epidural or intravenous analgesia. The study found that patients in the epidural group experienced improved quality of analgesia but did not experience a reduction in postoperative complications or alter long-term outcomes in cancer surgery. These findings have shaped clinical practice, leading to more selective use of epidural techniques.
The collaboration ignited through the MASTER trial, along with subsequent studies such as the B-Aware trial, laid the groundwork for the formal establishment of the ANZCA Clinical Trials Network (CTN). Since then, the CTN has recruited more than 65,000 patients across 77 sites in Australia and New Zealand, as well as dozens of international centres. CTN investigators have attracted more than $75 million in competitive research funding and led more than 30 large multicentre RCTs, with results published in the world’s leading journals including The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.
At the 2025 CTN Strategic Research Workshop in Glenelg, SA, delegates gathered with Associate Professor John Rigg for a commemorative photo. At the conference dinner, Professor Tomas Corcoran and Professor Philip Peyton paid tribute to his pioneering role, honouring the MASTER trial’s legacy and the decades of collaborative research that followed.
2025 ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting plenary presentation
Watch Professor Paul Myles and Professor Kate Leslie AO deliver a joint plenary presentation at the 2025 ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting, Cairns, reflecting on how and why the CTN was established and its remarkable achievements over three decades as the world’s leading anaesthesia, pain, and perioperative medicine clinical trials network.
Explore the full workshop wrap-up featuring highlights, photo galleries and videos.
MASTER trial history
1999 ANZCA Bulletin feature of the MASTER trial
Image: A/Prof John Rigg and Prof Paul Myles with research staff Jenny Hunt and Helen Fetcher
Associate Professor Rigg and Professor Paul Myles celebrating the recruitment of the 100th patient to the MASTER trial.
MASTER trial history
MASTER trial patient information and consent form
A picture of the original one page MASTER trial patient information and consent form.
