School of Translational Medicine News Blog: International Clinical Trials Day: 20 May

20 May 2021

International Clinical Trials Day: 20 May

James Lind conducted the first known clinical trial in 1747, on
a scourge of the British navy, scurvy. Image: RCPE Heritage

Every year, the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Clinical Trials Network (ANZCA CTN) celebrates International Clinical Trials Day to recognise the outstanding contribution of our ANZCA and Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) fellows, trainees and research coordinators to investigator-led clinical trials in anaesthesia, pain and perioperative medicine. International Clinical Trials Day is held on 20 May each year to commemorate James Lind’s trials on scurvy in 1747, which is the first known 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 trial was led by Monash University’s Central Clinical School Adjunct Professor, Tomás Corcoran, with the support of his team based at the CTN office (CCS) and the Royal Perth Hospital.

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 peri-operative use of dexamethasone.

The ANZCA CTN is one of the leading networks in anaesthesia, pain and peri-operative medicine in the world with 25 years of delivering world-class clinical research. Today, the ANZCA CTN has more than 12 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.

L-R: ANZCA team: Gillian Ormond, Karen Goulding (CTN office), Rob Packer, Susan Collins, Kayla Smith (ANZCA Research Foundation); Alfred Team: Molly Clarris, Ruby Han, Sophie Wallace, Mayumi Ueoka & Paul Myles. They are one of many teams in the ANZCA CTN who run trials. They are celebrating the recruitment of 50 TRIGS patients at the Alfred.

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