Shared decision-making pivotal to Patient Day at EAU24

Nutrition: Patients with cancer and the importance of nutrition

The first roundtable of the day was “Nutrition: Patients with cancer and the importance of nutrition”. High quality nutrition is always beneficial to patients, but nutritional plans have to be tailored to each patient and to each stage of their treatment process. Patients in recovery should eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains, while patients facing chemo may require supplements to offset loss of appetite. The topic immediately elicited engagement from the audience, particularly around barriers to patients’ ability to adhere to nutritional plans. Patients largely face a lack of knowledge about the nutritional value of food and do not always have access to high quality food. The panellists agreed that these are systemic issues that require institutional support, nutritional education and guidelines on nutritional components.

Penile Cancer: The importance of partnering with patients in procuring data

What followed was the roundtable “Penile Cancer: the importance of partnering with patients in procuring data”. Discussion centred around the unique challenges facing penile cancer researchers and patients. The community for Penile Cancer patients is small, and is made only smaller by the taboos associated with the disease. This not only limits the availability of data for PREMS and PROMS studies, but also the support network that patients can rely upon during their patient journey.
“When I asked for support groups, I was told ‘men don’t like to talk about it.’ Well not this man. I needed to talk.” – J. Osborne

Inflammatory Bladder

In the roundtable “Inflammatory Bladder”, the goal was to generate attention for the burden of and lack of guidelines for inflammatory bladder diseases. The focus was primarily on BPS/IC, chronic radiation induced cystitis and ketamine induced cystitis and the burden experienced by patients. A particular point of this roundtable was the rising addiction to ketamine in Europe, bringing with it cycstitis. Dr. Van Der Sanden emphasised the importance of direct communication around ketamine and an empathetic approach to difficulties in quitting.

Use of digital technology and data driven shared decision-making

The roundtable “Use of digital technology and data driven shared decision-making” discussed the pitfalls of poorly defined shared decision-making in the context of the shifting sands of patient-physician communication. Approximately 40% of patients do not have the health literacy to participate in shared decision-making. “We need not a record of what was said, but a record of what was understood” – Bertie Lee.  The legal pitfalls of shared decision-making rarely raise the question ‘did the patient agree to treatment,’ but rather asks “did the patient understand what the treatment meant.”

Patient Abstract Presentations

The Patient Abstract session highlighted research focusing on the needs of patients with urological disease, innovations in patient centred care, and the voices of patients as they report their experiences in treatment.

Award Winners
1 M. Marchetti (First prize Best Patient Poster abstract)
2 K. Beyer (Second prize Best Patient Poster abstract)
3 S. Moneer (Third prize Best Patient Poster abstract)