A Message from Dr. Nancy Mendenhall – Fall/Winter 2022-23

Dr. Nancy P. Mendenhall

Dear COMPPARE team, participants, stakeholders and friends,

I am excited to share with you that on October 31, 2022, COMPPARE closed enrollment with a total of 2,524 participants (1,024 photon patients and 1,500 proton patients; 900 pragmatic, 600 randomized)!

This is an exceptional accomplishment given the ongoing national healthcare staffing challenges driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am thankful for the COMPPARE administrative team as well as the research teams at all of our participating sites for working hard to get us to this milestone.

I am also deeply grateful to those patients, research staff, and physician investigators for their continued dedication to future generations of men with prostate cancer’s ability to make informed treatment decisions.

As we transition from focusing on enrolling to focusing on participant retention, we are beginning to reflect on what we’ve learned thus far in creating and carrying out a large, multi-institutional pragmatic trial. I believe COMPPARE will not only provide outcome information that guides future clinical decisions, but will also shed light on factors affecting patient enrollment on clinical trials of all kinds and perhaps become a guide to more effective patient-centric clinical trial design in the future.

I also wanted to share that we have created a new page for our participants, where you can find information about submitting your Quality of Life Questionnaires, accessing the VisionTree Optimal Care (VTOC) Patient Portal, and more. Take a look!

In good health,

Nancy Mendenhall, MD