Quality of social and treatment decision-making of women with early stage of breast cancer, and medical inequalities

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K15313
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Medical sociology
• Research Institution: Kurume University
• Principal Investigator: Yamauchi Keiko 久留米大学, 医学部, 講師 (50304514)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 乳がん / 意思決定

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conducted internet surveys and explored the characteristics decision-making women have encountered from when they were diagnosed with breast cancer (BC), degerming what decision-making involvement women with BC require. Making decisions about cancer treatment is a high priority for those women, but it was not the most frequent decision they made. The majority of decisions they had made were not related to the cancer treatment itself. Compared to women with chronic diseases other than BC, women with BC were more likely to seek kindness and a confident attitude from their physicians while they decided on treatment plans for cancer. Additionally, healthy women reported that they would like to be actively involved in making treatment decisions if they were diagnosed with BC but not if they were diagnosed with hypertension. These results suggest that social and psychological support would improve treatment decision-making as well as social decision-making for women who diagnosed with BC.

Free Research Field

公衆衛生学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

乳がんを診断された女性の療養生活は、告知とともに始まる幾つもの意思決定を基に築かれている。本研究は、求められる決定が、術式や術前・術後の治療法の選択といった治療に直接関係するものから、治療効果に影響すると考えられる仕事や家族のことなど、その具体的な内容を抽出した。また、乳がんの診断を受けた女性の意思決定の特徴を、乳がん以外の慢性疾患を持つ女性との比較、健康な女性を対象とした疾患シナリオを用いた調査から明らかにした。これらの結果は、乳がんの診断を受けた女性が円滑に意思決定を行うサポートを行い、療養生活の質の向上を促すシステム作成の基盤になると考える。