Long-term effectiveness of an online decision aid for female cancer patients regarding fertility preservation: Knowledge, attitude, and decisional regret.

Introduction: The decision, whether to undergo fertility preservation or not is highly demanding for cancer patients. Decision aids may act as an additional source of support. So far, only a limited number of decision aids regarding fertility preservation for female cancer patients exist and have been evaluated systematically. This paper presents the results of secondary analyses of the first randomized controlled trial evaluating an online decision aid for female cancer patients affected by different types of cancer. It focuses on fertility-related knowledge, attitude toward fertility preservation, and long-term effectiveness regarding decisional regret.

Material And Methods: Young female cancer patients between 18 and 40 years of age were recruited after fertility counseling with a reproductive specialist. They were assigned to either the control group (counseling only) or the intervention group (counseling followed by the additional use of the decision aid). Both groups had to complete a questionnaire after counseling as well as 1 and 12 months later, covering topics such as fertility-related knowledge, attitude towards fertility preservation, decisional conflict and regret. Recruitment was ongoing during 18 months in eight fertility centers located in Switzerland and Germany.

Results: Mean age of participating women was 29.31 years (SD 4.57). Of the entire sample (n = 51) 53% were affected with breast cancer, 27.4% with lymphoma, and 19.6% with various other types of cancer. Knowledge regarding the most common fertility preservation methods was high and comparable in both groups. Positive attitude significantly exceeded negative attitude among all participants (p = 0.001). Although the altogether low scores for decisional regret were on a higher level in the control group (T2: mean = 19.00, SD = 13.24; T3: mean = 22.0, SD = 20.67) than in the intervention group (T2: mean = 14.12, SD = 11.07; T3: mean = 12.94, SD = 13.24), there were no statistically significant differences between and within both groups. There was a positive association between decisional conflict and decisional regret at T3 (p = 0.001, r = 0.510).

Conclusions: This decision aid was suitable as an additional source of knowledge and may positively impact decisional regret in the long term. Results suggest that the provision of an online decision aid as a complement to fertility counseling may facilitate decision-making.