Making Treatment Decisions
Personal goals come into play for patients with advanced cancer.
By Kendall K. Morgan
Patients with incurable cancers often face difficult decisions about which treatments to try next or whether to pursue treatment at all. To help weigh options, patients are often encouraged to reflect on their personal goals. But what goals do patients with advanced cancer consider most important, and how should they go about making treatment decisions accordingly?
To better understand how patients set their personal goals, Kevin Rand, a psychologist at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, and his colleagues surveyed 84 patients with incurable cancer who were estimated to have less than a year before their tumor progressed or they died. The patients were asked to write down their current life goals. Then they were asked to list their current goals for cancer treatment. After that, the patients were presented with both lists and asked to select up to five top goals.The study, published in July 2016 in Supportive Care in Cancer, found the patients’ top treatment goals were fighting or curing the cancer and living longer. Their life goals looked a lot like those of any healthy person. When asked to choose which goals were most important to them, the patients put treatment goals ahead of their life goals.
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