Patients’ decision-making in radiation oncology

Abstract

Recently, growing attention has been devoted to developing patient decision aids and decisional support interventions to aid patients in their decision-making when making treatment choices in oncology. Treatment discussions are challenging, both for physicians to transfer medical information to patients, and for patients to conceptualize these risks and benefits and to form a treatment decision. This article provides an overview of the recent literature on decision-making preferences, treatment preferences and decisional support development in radiation oncology. We review the findings from studies that were conducted in radiation oncology that investigated patients’ preferences for radical or palliative radiotherapy across all cancer sites and discuss the challenges of transferring medical information to patients.

Keywords::

• decision-making
• patient decision aids
• patient preference
• radiotherapy

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.