Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trials Usher in the Future of Psychosomatic Medicine

Abstract

In palliative care, the benefits of usual drug therapies are often denied in randomized controlled trials. Psychosomatic medicine aims to deliver medical care that is appropriate to each patient, however, patients ; their families, and medical staff have to be convinced through evidence that prescribed therapies are valid. In non-randomized controlled trials, there is a possibility that the treatment effect could be underestimated or overestimated. For this reason, it is necessary to conduct multicenter randomized controlled trials in the field of psychosomatic medicine. In this paper, I would like to introduce the education of psychosomatic medicine that I received, results from clinical research in cancer pain, and issues in psychosomatic medicine which came up while training in another department. Finally, I would like to discuss how we could conduct to multicenter studies.