What should lung cancer patients know before surgery? A Delphi consensus study.

Area of Science:

• Thoracic Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Patient Education

Background:

• Preoperative patient education materials (PEMs) are crucial for improving surgical outcomes.
• Existing PEMs for lung cancer surgery exhibit significant variability.
• Standardizing PEM content is needed to optimize patient preparation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish consensus among thoracic surgeons on essential content for preoperative patient education materials (PEMs) for lung cancer surgery.
• To identify key topics for patient preparation to enhance surgical outcomes.
• To address the variability in current patient education materials.

Main Methods:

• Recruited board-certified thoracic surgeons via email invitations.
• Utilized a 3-round Delphi voting process with anonymized feedback and iterative revision of statements.
• Achieved consensus on statements with >80% agreement and performed thematic qualitative analysis on comments.

Main Results:

• 41 thoracic surgeons participated, with high response rates across 3 Delphi rounds.
• Consensus was reached on 13 out of 19 revised statements (68%).
• Statements detailing the operation itself had the highest consensus; day of surgery and recovery details had the lowest.

Conclusions:

• Provides consensus-based guidelines for preoperative lung cancer surgery PEM content from a thoracic surgeon's perspective.
• Highlights the need for expert opinion on certain topics while acknowledging the importance of patient input for others.
• Recommends evaluating patient preferences to finalize comprehensive guidelines.