This page provides figures for ‘accruals’ or the number of people ‘recruited’ to cancer trials in Ireland.
Note: While Cancer Trials Ireland makes every effort to track numbers for all trials in Ireland, in some instances this is not possible. The figures below therefore are accurate for 95%+ of all trials in Ireland.
WARNING: If you are not working in the cancer trials community, you should not interpret the figures below without assistance from Cancer Trials Ireland.
What are the latest figures?
The figures below relate to Q1 of 2024 from January 1st – March 31st. They include:
- Interventional trials (including drug trials, radiotherapy (RT) trials, medical device (Med Dev) trials, surgical trials or a combination of those, survivorship trials, diet trials, and exercise trials.
- Non-Interventional studies e.g. Translational, observational, imaging studies, questionnaires, biobanks and registries.
The trials portfolio includes academic and industry trials. The data for the same period in 2023 & 2022 is included for comparative purposes.
Below numbers reflect patients newly recruited to cancer clinical trials in Ireland.
What does ‘CTRIAL’ mean?
This refers to studies that have a Cancer Trials Ireland code, because it is a study in which we play an active part, or because it is a study we have ‘adopted’ into our portfolio, in order to include it in DSSG meeting discussions, and for other reasons.
What does ‘Non-CTRIAL’ mean?
This refers to studies whose recruitment numbers we track, but which Cancer Trials Ireland is not involved with in any capacity. Our objective in tracking recruitment numbers on these trials, and CTRIAL trials, is to provide the fullest picture possible for the number of people joining cancer trials in Ireland.
Accruals classified by disease area:
The figures below display patient recruitments in terms of the disease area they were recruited to in Q1 2024 versus the same period in previous years.
WARNING: Many complex factors contribute to the rise and fall of patient recruitment, including trial availability, trial closure, patient population and so forth. Readers should not simply interpret this data as a measure of performance.
| DSSG | 2024 Q1 | 2023 Q1 | 2022 Q1 |
| Basket* | 63 | 12 | 86 |
| Breast | 116 | 356 | 141 |
| CNS | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| GI | 6 | 64 | 2 |
| GU | 24 | 25 | 29 |
| Gynaecology | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Head & Neck | 53 | 8 | 2 |
| Lung | 41 | 13 | 13 |
| Lymph & Haem | 288 | 83 | 106 |
| Melanoma | 9 | 10 | 4 |
| Paeds | 3 | 4 | 9 |
| Sarcoma | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 607 | 578 |
393 |
* Basket trials include several different disease areas in one trial.
Accruals classified by trial site:
The figures below display patient recruitment to clinical trials at the named hospitals in Q1 2024 versus the same period in previous years.
WARNING: Many complex factors contribute to the rise and fall of patient recruitment, including trial availability, trial closure, patient population and so forth. Readers should not simply interpret this data as a measure of performance.
*NI = Non-Interventional
