Abstract
To the Editor:
Weeks et al. (Oct. 25 issue)
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raise an important concern that patients with advanced cancers may not understand that chemotherapy is not curative. However, as the authors acknowledge, there are challenges in interpreting patients' expectations on the basis of responses to a single, closed-ended interview item.
Our study on informed consent in early-phase oncology trials may shed light on the extent of these challenges. We found that patients express higher expectations of benefit when the query is framed in terms of personal benefit rather than in terms of a population frequency of a particular benefit.
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,
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Furthermore, . . .