Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Clinical Trial Discontinuation in Anesthesiology: Cross-sectional Analysis

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic drastically altered perioperative medical practice owing to safety concerns, postponing elective or nonemergent procedures, supply chain shortages, and reallocating perioperative staff to care for patients with COVID-19. However, the impact of the pandemic on the conduct on anesthesiology clinical research is unknown. Objective The primary objective was to quantify the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on anesthesiology clinical research. Methods We performed a systematic search using ClinicalTrials.gov to identify clinical trials related to the practice of anesthesiology. We screened trials with status updates from January 1, 2020, through October 1, 2021, to capture trials potentially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic by the time of our search. Investigators screened for relevant studies and extracted trial characteristics along with the reason for discontinuation reported on the clinical trial registry. Results A total of 823 clinical trials met inclusion criteria, and 146 clinical trials were discontinued within the designated date range. In total, 24 (16.4%) of the 146 clinical trials were halted explicitly owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant association existed between trial enrollment numbers and the likelihood of discontinuation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as larger trials were more likely to be disrupted (z=–2.914, P=.004). Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic is reportedly associated with the discontinuation of anesthesiology-related clinical trials. With the uncertain course of the COVID-19 pandemic, developing anesthesia trial protocols to help minimize social interaction and prevent premature trial disruption are imperative.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early termination of ophthalmology clinical trials: A cross-sectional analysis of ClinicalTrials.gov

“…Our study adds to the growing literature assessing the impact of COVID-19 on clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. 17 – 19 , 23 We found 34 (34/2280, 1.49%) OCT discontinuations due to the pandemic. Our results are similar to other fields such as autism (15/197, 7.6%), otolaryngology (33/1777, 1.9%), anesthesia (24/823, 2.9%), and depressive disorders (5/56, 8.9%).…”

“…On June 10, 2022, ClinicalTrials.gov was accessed through the Aggregate Content of ClinicalTrials.gov (AACT), a comprehensive, relational database of ClinicalTrials.gov that is updated daily. 16 We searched the AACT using terms listed on the "Eye Diseases" page of ClinicalTrials.gov and downloaded a dataset containing every registered OCT. As performed by similar studies, [17][18][19] we used the "last update posted date" as a proxy to identify trials possibly affected by COVID-19 and to track changes in trial recruitment status. We included trials last updated between January 1, 2020 and June 8, 2022, the latest version of the database.…”

“…Trials with multiple sponsors were characterized by the lead sponsor. Similar to other studies, [17][18][19] we coded trials as U.S. studies if any trial facility was in the United States and non-U.S. studies if all facilities were outside the United States. Furthermore, early phase I trials were categorized as phase I, phase I-II trials were categorized as phase II, and phase II-III trials were categorized as phase III.…”

Considerations on the Obstacles That Lead to Slow Recruitment in a Pain Management Clinical Trial: Experiences from the Belgian PELICAN (PrEgabalin Lidocaine Capsaicin Neuropathic Pain) Pragmatic Study

“…Te recent COVID-19 pandemic also had some drastic impact on medical practice and on the conduct of clinical research. A recent survey found that some 16.4% of anesthesiologyrelated clinical trials were discontinued within the designated data range due to COVID-19-related issues [35].…”

Retailoring training programmes in anaesthesia and intensive care after the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak

“…However, starting in March 2020, the world changed, and the first wave of COVID-19 interrupted the publication of clinical trials and other works. In this systematic review, Traxler et al [41] showed that almost 20% of anaesthesiology-related clinical trials were interrupted during the first period of the pandemic.…”