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Evidence summaries

Decision Aids for Patients Facing Health or Screening Decisions

Decision aids improve knowledge, reduce decisional conflict, and stimulate patients to be more active in decision making without increasing their anxiety. For surgical treatment, they have the potential to reduce preferences for more intensive treatment. Level of evidence: "A"

A systematic review 1 including 17 studies with a total of 2350 subjects in the intervention group and 1931 subjects in the comparison intervention group was abstracted in DARE. Compared with usual care, decision aids improved average knowledge scores for the options and outcomes by 13 to 25 points out of 100 (WMD 19, 95% CI 14 to 25). Decision aids had a positive impact on decisional conflict in 3 of 4 studies. There were no differences in anxiety, satisfaction with decisions okr satisfaction with the decision-making process. In 14 trials, decision aids used in decisions about major surgery reduced the preference for the more intensive treatment by 21% to 42% (RR 0.74, 95% CI 0.6 to 0.9).

    References

    • O'Connor AM, Rostom A, Fiset V, Tetroe J, Entwistle V, Llewellyn-Thomas H, Holmes-Rovner M, Barry M, Jones J. Decision aids for patients facing health treatment or screening decisions: systematic review. BMJ 1999 Sep 18;319(7212):731-4. [PubMed][DARE]

Primary/Secondary Keywords