[Adjuvant cancer treatment: what benefit does the patient consider worthwhile?]

Abstract

- Adjuvant treatments can be added to primary curative cancer treatments to increase the probability of survival. However, these treatments have side effects.- Research into what additional probability of survival cancer patients require from an adjuvant treatment before they consider it worthwhile, has been carried out in hypothetical situations.- The published literature on this subject shows that the additional benefit which patients expect is small. Yet, variation in patient preferences within studies is large.- Preferences regarding additional benefit are not consistently associated with patient socio-demographic or disease characteristics.- It is very likely that new patients who face the choice of adjuvant treatment will greatly differ from each other in the benefit that they require from it.- In order to give individualized recommendations, specialists need to ask the patient which benefits and disadvantages he or she considers to be important.