Letter to the Editor: Patients' Knowledge and Decisional Conflict Regarding Tamoxifen Use: Scientific Views.

Abstract

We read with much interest the recently published article “Assessment of Breast Cancer Patients’ Knowledge and Decisional Conflict Regarding Tamoxifen Use” by Kim et al. (1). The authors observed the breast cancer patients’ knowledge and decisional conflict regarding tamoxifen use. We wish to share our scientific views on the published article. According to the authors, there are no previous studies on patients’ knowledge on tamoxifen. An extant search of literature revealed one published study that described the reason why women feared to take tamoxifen (2). This important reference on the difference between chemotherapy and chemoprevention would have been worthwhile to add. Interestingly, an earlier study had stated that increased knowledge on tamoxifen may lead to decrease in the consumption of the drug and this reference could have been added (3). Although, the inclusion criterion was mentioned in detail, no specific exclusion criterion was stated. It was not stated clearly whether the patients were on any other adjuvant chemotherapy. The physical, role, emotional, cognitive, and social functioning are important parameters which were also not highlighted. An earlier research conducted on Japanese population considered all these functional scales to study the decisional conflict scale to ascertain the value of pharmacists’ information (4). It may be worthwhile to mention that previous studies were conducted on different ethnicity and racial backgrounds and it was found that women preferred to consume tamoxifen if there in the high risk group (5). Perhaps, that is the main reason why the stage of the disease should have been considered in the patients involved in the present study. Overall, this is an interesting article which may be helpful for breast cancer patients and medical personnel. The editor and authors need to be applauded for publishing such an important article.