Image courtesy of RPH Medical Illustrations
International Clinical Trials Day commemorate James Lind’s trials into scurvy in 1747, which is believed to be the first clinical trial in history. This year, International Clinical Trials Day backs on to the recent publication of the Perioperative ADministration of Dexamethasone and Infection (PADDI) trial results in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The PADDI trial took five years to complete with more than 300 PADDI collaborators to enrol 8880 patients from 55 hospital sites in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Hong Kong. The success of the PADDI trial builds on the brilliant track record of CTN investigators securing large multi-million dollar grants to fund our clinical trials and publishing the results in leading international medical journals. It also debunked myths around the perioperative use of dexamethasone especially in patients with diabetes.
The ANZCA CTN is one of the leading networks in anaesthesia, pain and perioperative medicine in the world with 25 years of delivering world-class clinical research. Today, we have more than a dozen clinical trials running mostly funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund. These trials will recruit 28,000 patients over the next five years and answer important clinical questions in peri-operative medicine.
The engine room for the CTN is the Anaesthesia Research Co-ordinators Network, which is a group of more than 160 research coordinators at the forefront of clinical trial research. They screen patients for clinical trials, as well as recruit, consent and complete timely data follow-up. We thank all the people in our network who contribute to the success of our clinical research.