An Invitation to Participate in Multicenter Trials

For the past six years, the Multicenter Trials Group (MCTG) has held an open meeting at the annual ABA conference.  Each year the attendance is larger, the participation more enthusiastic, and more and more ideas for collaborative research are exchanged.  This year, we are delighted to note several steps which indicate our ongoing progress.  In doing so, we want to be sure that the MCTG is meeting your needs and responding to your initiatives.

First, passage of the bylaws of our steering committee by the ABA's Board of Trustees is an important step, both in empowering the committee to proceed with establishment of formal infrastructure for multicenter clinical trials, and in formalizing our relationship with the ABA at large.  We're part of the American Burn Association, and we know we will benefit from collaboration with the Board, the Central Office, and the Membership.  We only hope the remarkable progress your Association has made in so many areas—advocacy, the ABLS course, verification, and so many others—will continue to rub off on us!

Second, we already have proof of the benefits of our association.  With the help of our Washington lobbyists, Dr. Tina Palmieri, and the Central office, a bill to direct funds toward clinical trials in burn care has been put forward by Senator Barbara Boxer.  This could "jump start" our efforts to create infrastructure, and greatly speed up the performance of large, formal, randomized clinical trials.

Third, we have rejuvenated our website, which will be maintained by Kitty Vineyard at the ABA's Central Office (thanks, Kitty!).  We promise to keep our members list and project up to date. If you would like to post on the website, please contact Linda Edelman at Linda.edelman@hsc.utah.edu.

Finally, we talked about the two roads that our research will take in the future:  the first, as mentioned, will be the creation of a formal mechanism to conduct  rigorous, carefully designed clinical trials.  But the second is equally important:  we want to continue to support the performance of smaller "grass-roots" investigator initiated projects proposed by all of you.  These projects can be retrospective reviews like our successful publications on TENS and purpura fulminans, smaller randomized trials like our initial evaluation of oxandrolone during acute burn care, studies of funding and financial issues like the publication of data on DRG 483, which resulted in a significant change in DRG reimbursement for burn centers, or other projects including practice guidelines, meta-analyses, etc.  It's clear that not every center will have the resources to participate in large, resource-intensive clinical trials, but any of you should be able to come forward with an idea, and obtain as much support as we can give you.

Unhappily, we're not funded yet.  But even without funding the steering committee would be happy to talk to any member with a proposal for multicenter research.  We can suggest methodology, review proposals, and help with protocol development, abstract writing, recruiting participants, and other details.  The projects will still be yours—and you'll be doing the work!  But our network was developed, above all, to promote communication among our members.  We'll try to do that through this website, and personally.

Please use this resource for whatever interests you.  I invite you to e-mail me or any steering committee member with questions or suggestions.  We'll try very hard to respond to your issues.

-- Jeffrey Saffle, MD