Educational Interventions for Patients With DCIS

A Randomized Trial for Educational Interventions for Patients With DCIS Actually Making Treatment Decisions

The purpose of this study is to determine whether adding an educational intervention, in the form of a decision board, which outlines the risks and benefits of treatment options for DCIS, at the time of the first surgical consultation will improve decision making for women with DCIS.

• The decision board explains the risks and benefits of mastectomy, excision and radiation, excision, radiation, and tamoxifen, excision alone, and excision without radiation and tamoxifen for women with DCIS.
• Patients will receive a decision board to take home for review. Two fifteen-minute telephone interviews will be conducted, one approximately one week after enrollment and one 2 months after enrollment.
• In the phone interviews, patients will asked to complete a brief survey. This survey will ask abou DCIS in general, the patient's treatment decisions, their feelings, as well as their experience with the decision board.
• This study will take about 2 months.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Eligible patients will include women over the age of 25 with newly-diagnosed DCIS who are candidates for breast conserving therapy.
• Pathologic confirmation of DCIS without evidence of invasive breast cancer and mammograms showing a single suspicious focus without mammographic or clinical evidence of multicentricity.
• Patients that have not made a decision regarding management of DCIS
• Eligible for radiotherapy to breast
• Oral and written knowledge of English

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients that have undergone mastectomy
• History of prior radiotherapy to the breast, scleroderma or systemic lupus erythematosus
• Clinically palpable disease in the axilla or contralateral breast cancer
• Co-morbidities that would render them ineligible for general anesthesia