Review
DENVER, June 27 — Treatment decisions for localized prostate cancer tend to be driven more by patients' fears and misconceptions rather than by understanding of the evidence, according to accounts of newly diagnosed patients.
A deliberate and thorough decision-making process is uncommon, suggest structured interviews with 20 men (age 54 to 80) diagnosed with localized prostate cancer, said Thomas Denberg, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Colorado here.
Instead, fearful that the cancer might quickly spread, more than half of the men expressed the desire to have it treated as quickly as possible, even though most knew prostate cancer is slow-growing, Dr. Denberg and colleagues, all internists, reported online in the journal Cancer.
Posted by gruwell at June 28, 2006 6:50 AM | TrackBack