Cancer: To tell or not to tell?

After a patient is diagnosed with a malignant illness, the physician is often left with the dilemma of how to communicate the diagnosis to the patient and the family. In the West, it is often the consensus that the patient be told. This is not necessarily true elsewhere, eg in Japan, the patient is often not told. A questionnaire survey was done to study how Singapore doctors feel about revealing the diagnosis of cancer to the patient. 90.4% of respondents will reveal the diagnosis to the family, while only 43.6% will inform the patient. The possible reasons are discussed.