Shared Decision-Making for Lung Cancer Screening: How Well Are We "Sharing"?

Background: Lung cancer screening (LCS) reduces lung cancer mortality, but it also carries a range of risks. Shared decision-making (SDM) is a process of engaging patients in their health care decisions and is a vital component of LCS.

Research question: What is the quality of SDM among patients recently assessed for LCS?

Study design and methods: Cross-sectional study of screened patients recruited from two academic tertiary care centers in the South Central Region of the United States. Self-reported surveys assessed patient demographics, values related to outcomes of LCS, knowledge, SDM components including receipt of educational materials, and decisional conflict.

Results: Recently screened patients (n = 266) possessed varied LCS knowledge, answering an average of 41.4% of questions correctly. Patients valued finding cancer early over concerns about harms. Patients indicated that LCS benefits were presented to them by a health care provider far more often than harms (68.3% vs 20.8%, respectively), and 30.7% reported they received educational materials about LCS during the screening process. One-third of patients had some decisional conflict (33.6%) related to their screening decisions, whereas most patients (86.6%) noted that they were involved in the screening decision as much as they wanted. In multivariate models, non-White race and having less education were related to lower knowledge scores. Non-White patients and former smokers were more likely to be conflicted about the screening decision. Most patients (n = 227 [85.3%]) indicated that a health care provider had discussed smoking cessation or abstinence with them.

Interpretation: Among recently screened patients, the quality of decision-making about LCS is highly variable. The low use of educational materials including decision aids and imbalance of conveying benefit vs risk information to patients is concerning. A structured approach using decision aids may assist with providing a balanced presentation of information and may improve the quality of SDM.