20 Questions
Deciding on a treatment can feel overwhelming. The questions below can help you have a clearer, more confident conversation with your care team.
Questions to ask your provider
You may want to ask your provider the following questions.
Why do you think this treatment would work for my type of sarcoma?
How many people with this sarcoma have you treated?
Did the other people have a similar subtype, stage, and location?
What were the results for those people?
Has this treatment been tested in clinical trials?
If there are results for this sarcoma or related cancers, what are the results?
Do the results of the clinical trials show this treatment is relatively safe?
Do the results of the trials show that the treatment is effective?
Are the results published in technical journals — NOT just the popular press?
How many people were in these studies?
Were the patients treated with any other treatments?
Can the doctor or clinic send me copies of the results?
How does the treatment work? (Make sure the explanation makes sense — you may have to do some homework here!)
What is the goal of the treatment, and how is its efficacy measured (for example, is survival measured in weeks, months, or years)?
How do they measure success for treatments where, say, the goal might be to strengthen the immune system?
What are the risks of the treatment?
What are the side effects, short- and long-term?
Can they provide any information showing the percentage of patients who develop these side effects?
If complementary medicines are used during treatment, how will they interact with traditional treatment drugs? Are there studies showing there will not be adverse interactions?
Anything else you can think of.
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