No Place for Kids: The Clinical Trials Enrollment

Written by: Heather Y.

As a parent of a 16 year old son with a Spinal Cord Injury since he was 15, accessing clinical trials and appropriate treatments and therapies has been less than ideal.  After combing through all the clinical trials for SCI on clinicaltrials.gov our son was only potentially eligible for 2 trials.  Over 95% of the trials required participants to be 18 years old and older to participate.  Trials are very narrow with many exclusions for participation.  Age should not be one of them. 

Therapies and treatments (i.e., PT, OT, acupuncture, dry needing, Electrical Stimulation,  adaptive exercise therapy, etc...) are all very limited and we've paid out of pocket for most of the services we have been able to find.