Advantages of Using Lotteries to Select Participants for High-Demand Covid-19 Treatment Trials.
Ethics Hum Res
; 42(4): 35-40, 2020 Jul.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-610764
ABSTRACT
As hospitals have experienced a surge of Covid-19 patients, investigators of Covid-19 treatment trials face a difficult problem:
when an institution has more eligible and interested patients than trial slots, who should be enrolled? Defining a clear strategy for selecting participants for "high-demand" Covid-19 treatment trials is important to avoid ad hoc and potentially biased decision-making by local investigators, which could inadvertently compromise a trial's social value, participants' interests, or fairness. In this article, we propose a set of ethical criteria for evaluating participant-selection strategies for such trials. We argue that the pandemic context-in particular, great urgency to develop safe and effective treatments, uncertainty surrounding Covid-19, and strain on the health care system that limits the time and effort available for trial enrollment-favors participant-selection strategies that optimize the ease of enrollment and, ideally, social value. A lottery and, where possible, a weighted lottery have important advantages in these respects.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumonia, Viral
/
Clinical Trials as Topic
/
Coronavirus Infections
/
Patient Selection
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Ethics Hum Res
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS