Risk-benefit Weigh In Treatment Decisions

In recent years,many literatures pointed out that patients with chronic diseases have low treatment compliance,so some researchers pay attention to the treatment decisions related to chronic diseases.A series of experiments aimed to explore how patients with chronic diseases weigh the side effects and efficacy of treatment decisions.And the neural mechanisms involved in treatment decision making have not be tested.Experiment one: the subject design gone as 6(probability of efficacy: 5%,16%,36%,64%,84%,98%)x 6(probability of side effects: 5%,16%,36%,64%,84%,98%).The experiment aimed to give participants a combination of a therapeutic drug based on the probability of its side effects and efficacy,making the choice of whether to accept treatment by themselves,investigated patients with chronic disease how to weigh the risks and benefits of treatment.In the process of decision,recorded the number of participants accept treatment and response times with each time of reaction.After the experiment,with reference to previous studies,the method of statistics and analysis of experimental results,calculated the percentage of participants accept treatment.Experiment two used 3(probability of efficacy:36%,64%,98%)×3(probability of side effects: 35%,65%,97%)of the design of the subject to explore the neural mechanisms of treatment decisions about potential treatment risks and benefits.This experiment used the same experimental paradigm as Experiment one,participants were asked to choose whether to receive treatment or not.During the experiment,EEG signals were recorded.After the experiment,repeated measurement ANOVA was carried out on the experimental results according to the previous data analysis method.The experiment 1 results were consistent with previous studies.With the elevated probability of side effects and the reduced probability of efficacy,the percentage of receiving treatment decreased gradually.The results were consistent with the description of treatment decision outcome by the probabilistic discount model and the prediction of health behavior by the improved HBM.It shows that,in treatment decisions,the perception of participants to evaluate the probability of side effects and efficacy,which jointly influence the decision.The experiment 2 results showed that in the early stage,the probability of side effects shows significantly influence of the amplitude of P200.Whether in the low or high probability of efficacy,the lower probability of side effects induced the higher P300 than the higher probability of side effects.The results showed that the brain processed automatically the risk information in the early stage,and weighed the risk and benefit information in the late stage,and the participants’ valuation of efficacy was reduced by the influence of risk.The results of this study indicated that the probability of side effects and efficacy of therapeutic drugs have a significant impact on the treatment decisions.The participants’ valuation of the efficacy were reduced by the probability of side effects.In reality,under the condition of the probability of efficacy,compared with the high probability of side effects,people were more likely to comply with treatments with a lower probability of side effects.