The information required by patients with early-stage prostate cancer in choosing their treatment

Objective To determine the information that men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer think is necessary to choose their treatment (surgery, radi otherapy or 'watchful waiting'). Patients and methods All men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer in a regional urology practice in an 18-month period were surveyed. Respondent s considered the treatment decision for a specific hypothetical case and ju dged whether each of 59 specific information items would be 'necessary' to know to make the treatment decision. Respondents provided basic demographic information (age, education and marital status). Results Of 89 patients, 71 (80%) responded; the mean (sd, range) number of items that individual respondents identified as necessary was 32 (12, 9-58) . Each item was considered necessary by 54 (18, 20-93)% of respondents. Of the 59 items, only five were necessary to greater than or equal to 80% of r espondents; 23 were necessary to greater than or equal to 67% of respondent s and five were not necessary to greater than or equal to 67% of respondent s. Patients were divided about the remaining 31 items. There were no strong correlations (none accounted for > 20% of the variance) between the respon ses and demographic characteristics. Conclusions There appears to be large variation among patients with early-s tage prostate cancer in the number of information items deemed necessary to make a treatment decision, and little agreement on the need for most indiv idual items. Demographic characteristics were not useful as predictors of t he information needs of each patient. The process of informing patients wit h early-stage prostate cancer (and their decision aids) needs to be flexibl e and able to accommodate a wide range of patients' information needs.