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(HealthDay News) – About two-thirds of patients hospitalized with a heart attack would prefer to have an active role in deciding their treatment, according to a study published online May 27 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Harlan M. Krumholz, MD, from the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT, and colleagues surveyed 6,636 patients hospitalized with an acute myocardial infarction regarding their decision-making preferences about treatment options.
The researchers found that 68.4% of patients preferred to play an active role in shared decision-making. Of these, 60.3% thought that the physician and patient should participate equally, 15.3% said that the patient should predominate, and 24.4% said that the decision should be the patient’s alone. Although seven demographic and clinical characteristics were independently associated with preferring an active role in a multivariable model, the discrimination of the final model was modest (C-statistic, 0.61).
“The results of this study highlight that a majority of patients want to be involved in decision-making, while also showing that there is a marked minority of patients who would prefer to be passive,” Krumholz and colleagues conclude.
Two authors disclosed financial ties to UnitedHealth and with pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
