Objective: To establish which attributes of conservative treatments for prostate cancer are most important to men.
Design: Discrete choice experiment.
Setting: Two London hospitals.
Participants: 129 men with non-metastatic prostate cancer, mean age 70 years; 69 of 118 (58%) with T stage 1 or 2 cancer at diagnosis.
Main outcome measures: Men's preferences for, and trade-offs between, the attributes of diarrhoea, hot flushes, ability to maintain an erection, breast swelling or tenderness, physical energy, sex drive, life expectancy, and out of pocket expenses.
Results: The men's responses to changes in attributes were all statistically significant. When asked to assume a starting life expectancy of five years, the men were willing to make trade-offs between life expectancy and side effects. On average, they were most willing to give up life expectancy to avoid limitations in physical energy (mean three months) and least willing to trade life expectancy to avoid hot flushes (mean 0.6 months to move from a moderate to mild level or from mild to none).
Conclusions: Men with prostate cancer are willing to participate in a relatively complex exercise that weighs up the advantages and disadvantages of various conservative treatments for their condition. They were willing to trade off some life expectancy to be relieved of the burden of troublesome side effects such as limitations in physical energy.