Patient preferences in prostate cancer: a clinician's guide to understanding health utilities.

Prostate cancer treatments have positive and negative outcomes that must be taken into account when deciding how to proceed with a patient's care. One way to quickly determine a patient's preferences in this situation is to ascertain their health utilities for various health states. Health utilities are underutilized but powerful tools in aiding shared decision making between patients and physicians. This review is intended to inform physicians about the different techniques available, help the physician choose among them, and aid initial development of utilities for use in the clinic by way of the tables' references. A brief history, summary of applications and current directions of health utilities, and collection of references are provided to increase the reader's overall knowledge of health utilities and encourage their use in the clinic. Ultimately, the use and choice of one of these direct preference-based measures depends on the needs of the physician.