Closing the gap of older adult recruitment to cancer clinical trials: a scoping review
Sarah Dillon, Rose Galvin, Deirdre Hartigan, Ruth Clifford, Niamh Peters, Katie Robinson, Margaret O’Connor, Patrick O’Donnell · 2026
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Description
Sarah Dillon and co-authors map why older adults stay out of cancer trials in a 2026 review. Older people carry much of the cancer burden yet join trials at low rates, which skews the evidence doctors use on them. The team swept six databases across two decades and screened nearly thirty thousand records, keeping thirty studies that probed recruitment of patients aged about sixty and up.
Influences clustered at four levels: personal, interpersonal, institutional, and environmental. The doctor-patient relationship cut both ways, able to encourage or to block entry, while poor information and mistrust also deterred. Caregivers, though often central to the decision, were barely studied. Seven papers tested fixes, with mixed designs. The authors say the modifiable levers are clear even if the evidence for pulling them is young.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sarah Dillon, Rose Galvin, Deirdre Hartigan, Ruth Clifford, Niamh Peters, Katie Robinson, Margaret O’Connor, Patrick O’Donnell |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |