1. ¹NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
2. ²Cancer Research UK, Psychosocial Oncology Group, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 9QG, UK
3. ³University Department of Surgery, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Australia
4. ⁴Clinical Trials Group, Department of Surgery, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, UK
5. ⁵School of Public Health, University of Sydney and The Cancer Council, Sydney, Australia
6. ⁶Sydney Cancer Centre – RPA and Concord Hospitals, Sydney, Australia

Correspondence: Professor L Fallowfield, E-mail: L.J.Fallowfield@sussex.ac.uk

Received 8 August 2005; Revised 17 October 2005; Accepted 18 October 2005.

Abstract

Adjuvant endocrine therapy improves recurrence and survival rates, but has side effects and is inconvenient. The aim of this study was to determine the preferences of premenopausal women who had adjuvant endocrine therapy in a randomised trial. In all, 85 (or eighty-five) women completed semistructured interviews 6–30 months after finishing adjuvant endocrine therapy. Hypothetical scenarios based on known potential survival times (5 or 15 years) and rates (60% or 80% at 5 years) without adjuvant endocrine therapy were used to determine the smallest gains women judged necessary to make their adjuvant endocrine therapy worthwhile. Although a third of the women considered gains of 1% in survival rates or 6 months in survival times sufficient to make their adjuvant endocrine therapy worthwhile, more than half the women required gains of at least 5% in survival rates or 3 years in survival time as necessary to make adjuvant endocrine therapy worthwhile. Larger benefits were required by women who had longer treatment, worse side effects, and by those who were treated with goserelin alone. The route of administration (tablet vs injection) did not affect preferences and some women judged small benefits sufficient to make their adjuvant endocrine therapy worthwhile, but many women required larger benefits than their counterparts in similar studies of preferences for adjuvant chemotherapy.