The patients' perspective: cut off points for satisfaction in pharmacological therapy and surgical outcomes

This article presents the results of a pilot study investigating patients' satisfaction thresholds for pharmacological outcomes versus surgical outcomes.

A total of 150 participants were presented with two hypothetical scenarios depicting either pharmacological therapy or surgical interventions. Each scenario described a potential outcome, from a 10% clinical improvement (value 10) to a 100% clinical improvement (value 100) and asked participants to indicate the satisfactory level they would find acceptable.

The results revealed distinct patterns in satisfaction thresholds between the two treatment modalities. Between the 150 participants, 52,7% were male and 47,3% female. We also identified a total of 28,8% whom were healthcare workers. Overall, the results for the pharmacological therapy outcomes observed a mean of 60,88 with a standard deviation of 22,77, a median of 60 and a mode of 70; while for the surgical outcomes the mean was 67,81 with a standard deviation of 23,03, the median 85 and the mode 80. We also observed that for the pharmacological therapy outcomes healthcare workers had a lower satisfactory cut off compared to non-healthcare workers. Another interesting finding was that for pharmacological therapy outcomes individuals under 50 y/o had a higher satisfactory cut off compared to individuals over 50 y/o, while for the surgical outcomes we got opposite results. Overall, the findings of this pilot study, even if limited, demonstrated higher minimum satisfaction expectations for surgical outcomes compared to pharmacological therapy outcomes. Specifically, participants tended to require more favorable results and outcomes from surgical interventions to meet their minimum satisfaction criteria.