Table 1.

Some research studies about truth telling in different countries.

References	Research Sample	Results
Mosconi et al. 1991 (3)	1171 Italian breast cancer patients and their physicians	- Only 47% of the patients reported having been told that they had cancer. - 25% of their physicians stated they had not given accurate information.
Blackhall et al. 1995 (4)	800 people with different ethnicity, Los Angeles County, California	- Korean Americans (47%), Mexican Americans (65%), European Americans (87%), and African Americans (88%) believed that a patient should be told the diagnosis of metastatic cancer. - Korean Americans (35%), Mexican Americans (48%), African Americans (63%), and European Americans (69%) believed that a patient should be told of a terminal prognosis.
Ruhnke et al. 2000 (5)	400 Japanese physicians, 65 patients; and 120 US physicians, 60 patients	- Few Japanese physicians (17%), but 42% of patients agreed that a doctor should inform the patient of a cancer diagnosis. But at least 80% of US physicians and patients agreed. - 80% of Japanese physicians and 65% patients agreed that a doctor should inform the patient’s family of the diagnosis. A minority of US physicians (6%) and patients (22%) agreed.
Mayer et al. 2005 (6)	362 Japanese and 350 US Pediatric oncologists	- Japanese physicians (61.8%) did not explicitly tell the child the diagnosis; only 9.5% always told. - 65% of the US physicians always explicitly told the child the diagnosis.
Tavoli et al. 2007 (7)	142 Iranian patients, Tehran, Iran	- Only 48% of hospitalized patients with gastrointestinal cancers were aware that they had cancer and the rest did not know their diagnosis. (The researchers asked patients and their families in the separate sessions about the disease and the reason of hospitalization.)
Erer et al. 2008 (8)	104 cancer patients, Medical Oncology Department of Uludağ University, Turkey	- 86.5% positive response to the items that the patients have the right to be informed, - 92.3% agreed that the physician should inform the patient on the diagnosis and the treatment, - 76.9% believed that the physician is obliged to inform the patient
Kazemi et al. 2010 (9)	200 Iranian clinical practitioners, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran	- Twenty percent of physicians believed that a patient should be told the diagnosis of a serious terminal disease. But 8% stated that they won't tell the patient the truth. Most respondents (72%) believed that the decision may be different in different conditions and various socio-cultural contexts.