Consent: assessing and communicating risk

The consent process is a fundamental part of modern medicine, and can be challenging for both surgeons and patients. It is a complex interaction of many factors, including surgical factors, individual patient factors and legal and ethical considerations. Informed consent requires a thorough understanding of the risks involved in any intervention for a particular patient. Risk assessment is therefore of fundamental importance. For accurate assessment, population data must be combined with individual factors about the patient and the proposed procedure to give as accurate an assessment of risk to that particular patient as possible. Individuals interpret information about risk subjectively, and it is important for the surgeon to use methods of communication that minimize bias and allow for clear understanding. Using combinations of numerical and descriptive terms, examples from other areas of life, visual aids, and avoidance of vague terms and confusing statistical data, will all help the patient to understand the risks discussed more completely.