In order to meet all the legal requisitions applicable in clinical trials, a pharmacovigilance system has been implemented for registering, reporting and communicating all adverse events occurring within the patient included in the clinical trial.
Every study team is trained during the site initiation visit on the definitions of adverse events and rules for communication. Any adverse event related or not with the study medication has to be gathered in the eCRF which contains a specific pharmacovigilance module. Only serious adverse events (SAE) are to be completed with more detailed information, such as SAE description (according to MedDra terminology), date of onset and resolution, severity, assessment of causality to study medication, action taken and other concomitant medication and/or procedures. Initial and follow-up communication until resolution is asked of the sites.
The SAEs form is centralized in the CTU-HUVR, whose personnel are responsible for the reception (by fax or email communication), registering and resolution of queries to the sites. A safety medical monitor will assess the SAEs form in order to evaluate if the information is to be communicated to regulatory authorities, ethics committees and investigators, following Good Clinical Practices rules provided for the presence of a serious unexpected adverse event (SUSAR). In cases where a communication through EudraVigilance system is foreseen for any of the three countries this is performed by the CTU-HUVR personnel after the complete information confirmed with the study site and the generation of CIOMS form (Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences form). Annual safety reports are issued with all the safety information in the study being reported to regulatory authorities and ethics committees (in case of Italy and Greece through the subcontracted contract research organizations (CROs)). The safety medical monitor is responsible for any update in the safety information of the IMPs.