For people with late-stage cancer, the hope of finding a cure can dwindle. In many cases, your doctor might recommend participating in clinical research for people with late-stage cancers. Sometimes experimental treatments might offer a novel approach is fighting your cancer.

Access To Experimental Treatments

Medical research offers people access to experimental treatments that would normally be declined by their health insurance. Most health insurance plans have exclusions for treatments they deem experimental, even if they are established treatments that may not be approved for cancer or your specific form of cancer. There may be instances where people are successfully able to petition their insurance for coverage, but this is rare, and sadly, the battle against an insurance company can take too much time. If there is a treatment available you want to try that is considered experimental, it is important to see if there are clinical trials available so you have another opportunity to fight back against cancer.

Contribute To Furthering Research

Some people with late-stage cancer feel compelled to help others who may eventually face the same type of disease. Although you may be uncertain of the outcome of your current treatment, you may want to consider medical research that studies adjunctive treatments or those that may simply want to follow your treatments to determine how effective they are. In the case of studies for adjunctive treatments, researchers may want to add an experimental treatment or they may want to study the possible benefits of combining certain treatments that are already available.

If you are unwilling to change your current therapy in any way, you can still contribute to medical research via longitudinal studies. Generally, these types of studies follow patients over several years. They may want to determine the outcomes of people with your specific type of cancer who have different treatments. With this information, researchers may determine a certain treatment protocol has better outcomes when given first.

Address The Needs Of Palliative Care

One part of research into late-stage cancer that may not be addressed is developing better approaches to palliative care. Regardless of your prognosis, you likely have symptoms associated with your cancer that must be treated. For example, pain management is a common problem in people with late-stage cancer, because they might have one or more tumors that are large and begin to cause pain.

Research into palliative care might consist of finding treatment regimens that help reduce pain, but have fewer side effects. For example, high doses of opioids can be necessary to reduce pain in people with late-stage cancer. Unfortunately, this can lead to sleepiness that prevents people from living their life to the fullest. Many people with agonizing pain will under-treat their pain just to continue being more engaged with their life. Researchers might want to try different combinations of pain medications or the use of pain pumps to see if people with significant pain can remain active while keeping their pain under control.

Medical research is an important tool to improve treatment options for late-stage cancer, but it is also important for those who choose to participate. In some cases, people with late-stage cancer may have the opportunity to find treatments that reduce symptoms and prolong their life.