Patients’ Expectations of the Benefits and Harms of Treatments, Screening, and Tests

Unrealistic patient expectations of the benefits and harms of interventions can influence decision making and may be contributing to increasing intervention uptake and health care costs.

To systematically review all studies that have quantitatively assessed patients' expectations of the benefits and/or harms of any treatment, test, or screening test. EVIDENCE REVIEW: A comprehensive search strategy was used in 4 databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO) up to June 2013, with no language or study type restriction. We also ran cited reference searches of included studies and contacted experts and study authors. Two researchers independently evaluated methodological quality and extracted participants' estimates of benefit and harms and authors' contemporaneous estimates.