Faculty Opinions recommendation of Formats for improving risk communication in medical tradeoff decisions.

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Abstract
Important health decisions can be facilitated by supplying key risk data in percentage terms, and by supplementing verbal descriptions of risk with bar charts. This study shows that lay people are best able to evaluate medical trade-offs (decisions about treatments that reduce risk of one illness but increase risk of another) when information is presented in terms of percentages ("your risk of cancer is 40%") rather than in terms of frequencies ("your risk of cancer is 40 in 100"). Evaluations are also more accurate when risks are presented graphically (with bar charts) than in words only.

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