Copyright
©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Dec 16, 2017; 5(12): 437-439
Published online Dec 16, 2017. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v5.i12.437
Published online Dec 16, 2017. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v5.i12.437
Do you want to participate in a clinical study as a healthy control? - Risk or benefit?
Hanna Giessen, Beat Mueller, Philipp Schuetz, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Christian A Nebiker, Department of Surgery, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Matthias Bruehlmeier, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Stefan Spreitzer, Department of Pathology, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Author contributions: Giessen H and Schuetz P contributed to drafting the manuscript; Nebiker CA, Bruehlmeier M, Spreitzer S and Mueller B contributed to revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this study gave her written informed consent authorizing use.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All contributing authors have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Philipp Schuetz, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Tellstrasse 1, Aarau 5000, Switzerland. philipp.schuetz@ksa.ch
Telephone: +41-62-8386812
Received: May 14, 2017
Peer-review started: May 17, 2017
First decision: July 5, 2017
Revised: November 3, 2017
Accepted: November 10, 2017
Article in press: November 10, 2017
Published online: December 16, 2017
Peer-review started: May 17, 2017
First decision: July 5, 2017
Revised: November 3, 2017
Accepted: November 10, 2017
Article in press: November 10, 2017
Published online: December 16, 2017
Core Tip
Core tip: A lady participating as healthy control in a study was found to suffer from a medullary thyroid cancer, a type of cancer in total surgical removal before the tumor has spread is the most important prognostic factor. The difficulty is the low diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound and procalcitonin-computed tomography scan, as well as the limitations of fine needle aspiration in a patient with several nodules. This case illustrates the consequences of volunteering as a “healthy control” in a clinical study. While early detection of the MCT was possible in our patient it paid off for her, but abnormal test results may also cause harm to patients if being false positive and leading to invasive procedures.