Trial Summaries for Our Patients: Ahora en español
For most NCTN and NCORP trials, the NCI's Cancer Trials Support Unit (CTSU) makes a Spanish-language version of the consent form available on its website. But other patient education and outreach content we produce for our trials is typically available only in English. I'm happy to report that's changing.
With support from The Hope Foundation, SWOG has begun having our patient-friendly plain language summaries – which we provide for all new trials – translated into Spanish.
Our goal is to develop a Spanish-language version of each new summary, once the English-language version is approved by the NCI’s Central Institutional Review Board (CIRB).
We’ll make these versions available alongside their English-language counterparts, linked from the SWOG website and the CTSU.org website. The first few have been posted (S1914, S1925, S2108CD) and are also available as printable PDF documents. A number of others are undergoing CIRB review, with more to come.
As you know, Spanish is the second most common language in the United States, with more than 40 million Americans speaking it at home. While many Spanish speakers are also fluent in English, there are a significant number we exclude from our trials, by not providing resources in that former language.
For most SWOG trials, our rate of enrollment of Hispanic patients remains lower than their rate of representation in the general population. We believe these translations – by serving as a clear and comprehensible introduction to a clinical trial for patients previously excluded from access to such a resource – will prove a valuable tool in increasing the percentage of patients accruing to SWOG trials.
The translations should also increase the reach and impact of the investment we already make in developing patient-friendly summaries of our studies for prospective patients and their families.
The real impact of these materials will be determined by you. As we make them available for more trials (and we’re also working to translate the summaries for already active studies), let us know if – and how – you use them, and whether your patients find them valuable.
I’m proud to say SWOG is first among the NCTN groups to commit to routinely providing Spanish-language versions of our recruitment materials.
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Trial of the Week
S2104: A Phase II Randomized Trial of Postoperative Adjuvant Capecitabine and Temozolimide versus Observation in High-Risk Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors
S2104 is enrolling patients with high-risk pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs). This is a rare cancer, accounting for just 1 to 2 percent of all pancreas tumors.
Resection is the preferred treatment, but a significant percentage of patients go on to have their disease recur after surgery. S2104 is testing whether adjuvant treatment can extend the time to recurrence.
Patients are randomized, 2 to 1, to either four 28-day cycles of capecitabine plus temozolomide or just observation for those four months. The primary endpoint is recurrence-free survival, but the study team is also tracking overall survival and safety and tolerability of the adjuvant treatment as compared to observation.
The trial was activated in late 2021 and is open at 254 sites. Thus far, it has enrolled 25 patients toward its goal of 154.
We hope to accelerate accrual, so please keep this trial on your radar – when you see a patient with pNETs, think S2104. And if you do not have the study open at your site, please reconsider.
Heloisa Soares, MD, PhD, of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah is S2104 study chair.
Learn more at the SWOG S2104 page or the CTSU S2104 page.
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