Resources for The Prepared Patient

What Do Risk Numbers Mean For Me?

When you read in the newspaper that a new ulcer drug increases the risk of stomach bleeding by 30 percent, or your doctor hands you a pamphlet that notes the relative risk of men your age developing prostate cancer with a “watch and wait approach,” do you end up feeling like it’s all a roll of the dice? In medicine, “risk” doesn’t mean “risky” — it’s a statistically based measure of how certain treatments fare in certain patients with certain conditions. It’s math, sure, but it’s math that could help you make some significant decisions about the kinds of care you want to pursue. So what do all those numbers really mean?

The following Web pages can help you understand the basics of medical risk. It can be useful to read several of the pages, since each explains the concepts in a slightly different way.

The National Institute on Aging’s short article explains what researchers mean by absolute and relative risk, and describes the medical studies used to come up with these numbers.
www.niapublications.org/tipsheets/risk.asp

Breastcancer.org’s page on weighing the pros and cons of treatments also describes relative and absolute risk.
www.breastcancer.org/treatment_stats.html

Aetna’s Intelihealth site talks about statistical risk, but also discusses the difference between small, early studies of a treatment and larger studies carried out over several years.
www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHWooo/35320/35323/327387.html?d=dmtHMSContent

The GeneticHealth.com Web page discusses risk and chance with the help of numerous pictures, including the kinds of graphs you might come across in a medical study.
www.genetichealth.com/Risk_Tutorial.shtml

Consumer Reports has an excellent step-by-step video that uses illustrations and simple language to explain medical risk and how risk numbers can be used to decide between different treatments.
www.consumerreports.org/health/decision-support/understanding-risk-1.htm

Excerpted from Jessie Gruman’s Aftershock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You — or Someone You Love — a Devastating Diagnosis, Walker and Company, 2007.