False Beliefs Affect Treatment of Prostate Cancer
Written By: Reuters Health
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Published - Jul 12, 2006
Patients newly diagnosed with localized prostate cancer often don't retain information provided by their physicians about treatment options, risks, and expected outcomes, a new study (2006) conducted at the University of Colorado at Denver suggests.
Instead, patients are inclined to base their treatment decisions on fear and uncertainty, false impressions, and anecdotes from acquaintances who have been treated for prostate cancer.
To see what factors affect patients' decision-making process, Dr. Thomas D. Denberg and his associates interviewed 20 men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer receiving care from the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Ages ranged from 54 to 80 years.
As reported in the journal Cancer, regardless of intellectual knowledge of their own clinical condition, most men desired treatment as soon as possible. The patients had unambiguous opinions about prostate removal, which they seemed to equate with the gold standard, against which their decisions were made.
Eight felt surgery was the best option, because they thought it to be the treatment most likely to remove all traces of the cancer. According to Denberg's group, "compared with surgery, other forms of treatment are less immediate, less visible, and more mysterious and indefinite."
Among those who didn't want to have their prostate removed, some of the reasons were based on the belief that surgery and anesthesia is dangerous and possibly deadly, that their recovery would be prolonged and painful, that exposing the tumor to air can cause its spread, and that surgery causes impotence.
Regardless of which option they chose, none of the patients compared side effects of treatments.
Nineteen of the patients were aware of the experiences of acquaintances, and were far more likely to base their treatment decisions on this information rather than their physicians' advice. Nearly half of the subjects independently sought information about the disease, but found it to be confusing and contradictory.
Denberg's group recommends that doctors explicitly describe common misconceptions and correct them. They also advise that they pay greater attention to patients' fears and anecdotal influences.
SOURCE: Cancer, August 2006.