Editor—In his editorial Edwards discussed the communication of risk.1 Many times in health care decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty, such as choosing the type of breast cancer surgery when the staging of the disease has yet to be confirmed.
Under such circumstances we have found that Chinese women facing choice between mastectomy and lumpectomy lack sufficient information on risks and outcomes and, as such, tend to use an intuitive rather than rational decision making approach.2,3 In the absence of clear outcome data, these women want their surgeon to make a clear recommendation about a preference for treatment. Such a recommendation may be being used as an “experience” proxy for lack of risk estimation.
Competing interests: None declared.
References
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