[Adjuvant cancer treatment: what benefit does the patient consider worthwhile?]

Adjuvant treatments can be added to primary curative cancer treatments to increase the probability of survival. However, these treatments have side effects. Research into what additional probability of survival cancer patients require from an adjuvant treatment before they consider it worthwhile, has been carried out in hypothetical situations. The published literature on this subject shows that the additional benefit which patients expect is small. Yet, variation in patient preferences within studies is large. Preferences regarding additional benefit are not consistently associated with patient socio-demographic or disease characteristics. It is very likely that new patients who face the choice of adjuvant treatment will greatly differ from each other in the benefit that they require from it. In order to give individualized recommendations, specialists need to ask the patient which benefits and disadvantages he or she considers to be important.