UPDATE - Issue 29 - Spring 2007
Patient Priorities
A recent study has been completed into the attitudes of 382 men with locally advanced and metastatic prostate cancer from six countries.
All the survey participants had received ongoing hormonal therapy for at least a year. Control of their cancer, outliving their disease and maintaining an active life for as long as possible were the three most important factors the men surveyed wanted from their hormonal treatment. These three factors were considered to be more important than treatment side-effects and symptom relief.
Over one third of the men surveyed said that they trusted their specialist physician completely and more than half said this trust had increased since they were first diagnosed. This high level of trust was also reflected in treatment recommen-dations, although one in five men surveyed felt that they would like to be more involved in treatment decisions. Nearly one in three felt they were not aware of all the treatment options available to them. Furthermore, the survey results revealed that patients' desire for information about the disease and treatment options increased post diagnosis. In addition to their consultant, half of the men surveyed wanted to speak to another patient with prostate cancer who had received the same treatments as them. The Internet was not the most popular or trusted source of information for patients, although it was a more popular source amongst US patients. One would expect this to change in the UK as Internet use rises amongst older men.
These findings should be of interest to all those concerned with fostering patient support networks in the UK.