Risk preferences and attitudes to surgery in decision making.

ABSTRACT: Background and purpose - There is increasing evidence that several commonly performed surgical procedures provide little advantage over nonoperative treatment, suggesting that doctors may sometimes be inappropriately optimistic about surgical benefit when suggesting treatment for individual patients. We investigated whether attitudes to risk influenced the choice of operative treatment and nonoperative treatment. Methods - 946 Swedish orthopedic surgeons were invited to participate in an online survey. A radiograph of a 4-fragment proximal humeral fracture was presented together with 5 different patient characteristics, and the surgeons could choose between 3 different operative treatments and 1 nonoperative treatment. This was followed by an economic risk-preference test, and then by an i

SUBMITTER: Meunier A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5560206 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature