[Perception and communication of medical risk which implications for preoperative anaesthetic consultations?]

Informing patients about available treatments, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as the associated risks, is critical to obtain an informed consent and is the responsibility of physicians, including anaesthesiologists. However, risks issues are not systematically discussed during anaesthesia consultations or are addressed in a vague and incomplete way. In order to improve communication and the quality of the informed consent, it is therefore essential to scrutinize problems linked to communication about risks. This article is based on a review of French and English literature on perception and communication about medical risks. Its objectives are for the one hand to summarize the main difficulties concerning risk communication in medicine and, on the other hand, to offer tools that can foster quality communication with patients especially during anaesthesia consultations.