Are patients making the right choices?
A high-quality decision can be defined as one that is fully informed and is consistent with the decisionmaker’s underlying values.19 Research suggests that patients’ decision making for breast cancer treatments might be lacking in both of these areas. For instance, one study found that patients frequently made decisions without having accurate knowledge about the risk and benefit trade-offs among the surgical treatment options.20 Fewer than half of the patients knew that BCS with radiation and mastectomy confer equivalent survival. Low knowledge was observed across all education levels and even among the one-third of women who reported that risk of recurrence was the most important factor in their treatment decision.21 Another study found that low knowledge of treatment benefits was observed among patients treated in different settings (for example, a comprehensive cancer center versus no cancer program) and by surgeons with different characteristics (for example, sex, years in practic
