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Treatment comparison worksheet
Put the treatment options you were offered side by side, one column each, with the questions that fill in the rows. It does not score the options or tell you which to pick.
How this works
Treatment choices are usually explained one at a time, in a room where you are already trying to take in something enormous. By the time you get home you have half of one option and a fragment of the other. This worksheet gives them each a column, and gives you the questions that fill the rows in.
Nothing could tell you which option to pick — the answer depends on what you want your life to look like, and no worksheet knows that. What it can do is make sure you are comparing the same things about each option, and that the differences are visible on one page.
Nothing you type here is saved, sent or logged. Close the tab and it is gone, so print or copy the sheet before you leave. Not been to the appointment yet? Print it blank.
1. What are you choosing between?
Name the options you have been offered. If waiting is one — sometimes called active surveillance — give it a column too.
2. What matters most to you?
Pick up to 3. These print at the top of the sheet, where your care team will see them. Two treatments with similar survival numbers can differ enormously on these, and nobody can weigh that for you.
3. Fill it in together
You are not expected to know these answers. Open what to ask on any row and put the question to your team — that is the part of this worksheet that does the work.
What this option is
What it is called
What it is meant to achieve
What it asks of you
How long, how often, and where
Recovery and time off
What it might give you
The benefit, in actual numbers
How solid that number is
What it might cost you
Side effects most people get
Risks that are serious or do not go away
Fertility, intimacy, and the long term
Cost and coverage
What happens next
If it does not work
Whether you can change your mind
What happens if you wait, or do nothing for now
4. Take it with you
Bring somebody with you if you can. Two people remember roughly twice as much of an appointment, and the second person is usually the one who notices the question that did not get answered.
Treatment comparison worksheet
| Option 1 | Option 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| What this option is | ||
| What it is called | ||
| What it is meant to achieve | ||
| What it asks of you | ||
| How long, how often, and where | ||
| Recovery and time off | ||
| What it might give you | ||
| The benefit, in actual numbers | ||
| How solid that number is | ||
| What it might cost you | ||
| Side effects most people get | ||
| Risks that are serious or do not go away | ||
| Fertility, intimacy, and the long term | ||
| Cost and coverage | ||
| What happens next | ||
| If it does not work | ||
| Whether you can change your mind | ||
| What happens if you wait, or do nothing for now | ||
cancerexplained.org/tools/treatment-comparison — a worksheet for asking, not medical advice. Ask for benefits as whole numbers of people out of 100, not percentages.
One thing worth knowing before you go in
Benefit is usually described as a percentage, and percentages hide the size of what is being offered. “This reduces your risk of recurrence by a third” sounds enormous. If the risk was 12 in 100, a third of it is 4 people in 100 — real, worth having, and a different decision from the one the percentage implied. Asking out of 100 people like me, how many are helped by this is one of the most useful questions on the sheet.
Read next
- Appointment question builder — build a printable list of questions for a specific appointment.
- Getting a second opinion — when it is worth it, and how to ask without causing offence.
- Side effects by treatment — what is common with each, and when to call.
- How clinical trials work — a trial is sometimes one of the options, and belongs in a column.
This worksheet is a way of organizing a conversation, not medical advice, and it cannot tell you what any option would do for you specifically. Your care team is the source of the answers — the worksheet only makes sure the questions get asked. If something here is wrong or unclear, tell us at /corrections.