Decision-Making Process—Communicating Risk/Benefits: Is There an Ideal Technique?

During the last decade, there have been major advances in the treatment of early-stage breast cancer. The decisions a patient now must make concerning her treatment are often difficult and complex, e.g., mastectomy versus lumpectomy plus breast ra-diation therapy, adjuvant chemotherapy and/or hormonal therapy versus no further treatment, regional radiation therapy or no regional radiation therapy. In the past, physicians tended to make decisions for patients with little patient input. More recently, women have indicated the need for more information about their disease and a desire to be involved in decisions about their care (1). Degnar et al. (2) examined the preferences of 1012 women with breast cancer for participation in treatment decision making. Twenty-two percent of the women wanted to select their own cancer treatment (active role), 44 % wanted to select their treatment collaboratively wit