Awareness of disease: a cross-sectional study on ovarian cancer patients

Today, in Italy, many cancer patients are not fully informed about severity/curability of their disease. Because of the impossibility to directly obtain information on the lack of awareness of disease, a cross-sectional study of 160 consecutive patients affected by primary ovarian cancer was carried out. Disease was considered "easy to cure"/"difficult to cure" by 74 (46.2%)/47 (29.4%) patients. Likewise, disease was considered "not severe"/"severe" by 39 (24.4%)/84 (48.7%) patients. Comparing these results with those obtained analyzing the other type of neoplasia, the perception of severity and "difficulty to cure" of the disease was found more frequent among ovarian cancer patients even if still one fourth of them considered their disease not severe. Therefore, some doubt arises regarding the validity of both fully informed consent to therapy and the utility measurements, based on patient preferences.