PWE-63 Recruitment potential of enhanced IBS trial recruitment strategies in the community

IntroductionParticipant recruitment is a major factor to the success of a clinical trial and new strategies developed with the aim to increase community recruitment need to be evaluated. This is especially important in chronic conditions where patients are not routinely managed in specialist clinics. This study aims to describe the demographic of screened eligible individuals using the virtual trial process to an interventional irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) trial.MethodsThe RELIEVE IBS-D trial was a commercially sponsored pragmatic trial assessing the efficacy of an over-the-counter intestinal adsorbent in the management of diarrhoea predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D). Following conversion to a virtual trial, consent for contact registries (C4CR), digital media (DM) and newspaper advertising (NA) were used to recruit participants. Potential participants were directed to an online web-based pre-screening questionnaire to assess their eligibility, before a virtual consultation and electronically consented.Results540 (41.7%) of the 1292 screened population were eligible. C4CR identified participants had a different geographical distribution to those recruited through NA and DM, seen in figure 1.Abstract PWE-63 Figure 1Demographics were: C4CR mean age of 43 ± 14.08, with a male to female ratio of 1:3. DM, mean age 43.9 ± 14.96 with a male to female ratio of 2:7. NA, mean age was 60.6 ±16.59 and male to female ratio of 1:2.ConclusionsIt is increasingly recognised that methods of reaching out to community-based participants is needed to improve recruitment to trials of some chronic conditions like IBS. Different recruitment modalities appear to appeal to different participant demographic. An effective ‘recruitment engine’ requires a multi-modality approach.