If you have recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer...

...you have by now become acquainted with the plethora of information available – from many sources. But how about your doctor. How much information have you received from him or her? That has been the subject of a number of articles recently under the heading of “shared-decision-making-aids.”

These are groups of materials dealing with your disease state and its treatment options. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal examined the trend as it related to prostate cancer. Quoting from the Journal:

Thomas Stormont, a urologist and surgeon at Stillwater Medical Group in Stillwater, Minn., was skeptical at first when the group agreed to use shared-decision-making aids provided by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making as part of a demonstration project.

Although the material is reviewed semi-annually for possible updating, Dr. Stormont felt the video and booklet on prostate cancer were incomplete. They didn’t cover some of the newer treatments, for instance, such as prostate cryoablation, the freezing of the prostate to treat localized cancer.

“I thought it would be a waste of time, another barrier between me and the patient, and more literature I wasn’t in control of,” he says.

Dr. Stormont agreed to use the programs, but supplements them with his own literature that includes information on newer treatment options. He says he has found that the decision aids help patients and their spouses get better educated about early prostate cancer, so his time with them is “more relaxed, efficient and focused.”

Patients have more realistic expectations about their treatment and side effects and are less likely to seek out second opinions, he says. They also are more comfortable choosing less-invasive treatments after reviewing the decision aids, he says.

“On one hand, while I am losing some surgical patients because of this process, on the other, we both are more comfortable that they are choosing the best treatment for them—one that they are more informed about, more comfortable with and less likely to regret later on,” he says.

Don Paulson, 74, a patient of Dr. Stormont, learned last week that he has prostate cancer, which he says came as a shock after years of good health. At an initial counseling session, oncology care coordinator Joyce Kramer went over the diagnosis and treatment options with him and his wife, Phyllis. She reassured the couple that the cancer was not life threatening and sent them home with a prostate-cancer DVD and some printed literature to view prior to a visit with Dr. Stormont over the weekend.

“We had a chance to digest it rather than getting it all in one big chunk,” says Mr. Paulson.

After watching the video, Mr. Paulson says he felt he understood his options far better. He is now weighing whether to chose the implantation of radioactive seeds, or try the cryoablation described by Dr. Stormont, who performs the procedure.

“If we had just gone straight to the doctor’s office and heard all of these options it would have been too much. It was good to be knowledgeable and review all of the possible side effects of different treatments first.”

Richard Derr, 75, also was recently diagnosed at Stillwater with prostate cancer. He says the decision aids helped him decide that both surgery and radiation carried risks of side effects that he wasn’t prepared to face, including incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Because his cancer was slow growing, he decided to go for an “active-surveillance” strategy, checking every few months for signs that the cancer is progressing.

Mr. Derr says he wished he’d had similar help last year when he was considering whether to have back surgery for a severe lower-back problem after unsuccessfully trying physical therapy and medications. Though his orthopedic surgeon told him there might be extensive rehabilitation, “he didn’t talk to me a lot about the risks,” Mr. Derr says.

After the surgery, he began feeling numbness and tingling in his feet, a condition, known as neuropathy, that is a potential side effect after back surgery. “I’m not saying the surgery caused it, but no one ever mentioned it was a possible side effect,” Mr. Derr says. “If I had known that it was I might not have made the decision to have the surgery.”