How to Choose Cancer Treatment

One of Life Enthusiast’s clients, Donna Tennant explains her process of dealing with cancer, and how she approached the selection of her treatment options.

Experts agree that patients should arm themselves with information as they navigate their way to the cancer care decisions that are best for them. If a cancer diagnosis happens to come from an experienced cancer specialist with top-notch credentials, you may not feel the need to get a second opinion before beginning treatment.

However, with a potentially life-threatening disease like cancer, most doctors expect in fact, some even encourage patients to seek advice from another physician.

They should take it another step further: they should encourage you to compare the efficacy of the proposed treatment with its two obvious alternatives:

  1. Do nothing else, and
  2. Change your lifestyle so that cancer-causing activities are eliminated.

Your first goal in seeking a second opinion should be to confirm the diagnosis.

I hope your medical coverage includes second opinions. Get all reports and pathology slides reviewed by a specialist before you commit to a diagnosis. A specialist should evaluate the type and extent of a cancer they call it staging because it is important to know just how aggressive your treatment should be.

And then, before you commence with any treatment program, get the numbers, the statistics that are associated with the proposed course of action. You need to understand the difference in outcomes between the suggested plan, ignoring the problem (doing nothing), and taking the life-style-change approach.

You need to understand the difference between the relative and absolute benefits of the proposed treatment.

When talking about the benefits of any medical test or treatment in health care, it is important that people are informed about the absolute benefits. Some may argue that a focus on absolute benefits is biased against preventive interventions because the absolute benefits of prevention are usually small.

Study the graphic on this page to fully associate with the meaning of Absolute Benefit as compared with Relative Benefit. And then see the options presented on our website that will try to educate you in how to choose cancer treatment.

Author: Life Enthusiast Staff