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Patient-Centered Pathology Reports Improve Prostate Cancer Understanding

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Jan 5, 2025.

By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Jan. 3, 2025 -- Patient-centered pathology reports (PCPR) help patients to understand prostate cancer results better than current standard format reports, according to a research letter published online Jan. 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Cathryn J. Lapedis, M.D., from Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, and colleagues compared diagnosis knowledge and worry among adults (aged 55 to 84 years) presented with different formats of prostate biopsy reports. The analysis included 799 participants randomly assigned to the PCPR group, 706 to the standard university report group, and 733 to the standard Veterans Affairs (VA) report group.

The researchers found that 93 percent of participants who received the PCPR accurately identified that the report showed prostate cancer compared with 39 percent of those who received the university report and 56 percent of those who received the VA report. Similarly, more PCPR recipients accurately classified the report as showing either low or high risk (93 percent) compared with 41 percent of university recipients and 36 percent of VA recipients. There was also variance noted by format for accuracy in reporting the total Gleason score (84 percent for the PCPR group versus 48 percent for the university group and 40 percent for the VA group). There was a significant association seen between reported worry and risk level for PCPR recipients, with a higher level of worry in the high-risk scenario and a lower level of worry in the low-risk scenario compared with the other two conditions. The PCPR group reported significantly higher ease of understanding than the standard groups.

"Most study participants could not extract basic information -- including whether they have cancer -- from standard prostate cancer pathology reports but were able to understand this diagnostic information from the PCPRs," the authors write.

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Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

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Posted January 2025

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