Prostate cancer is a common male cancer, and arguably the form of cancer with least certainties about most appropriate form of treatment, leading to a greater freedom of choice among patients as to which treatment they wish to undertake.

Department of Health guidelines state that to be valid, consent to treatment must be fully informed, and professional bodies demand that consent should be ongoing throughout a course of treatment. It is recognised that in spite of the wealth of information available, prostate cancer patients generally feel less well informed about their disease and treatment than those with any other form of cancer.

Information about treatment efficacy and outcome is available from a wide variety of sources, of varying reliability, and patients can as easily receive too much information as they can too little. Bias from those imparting information cannot be excluded, and patient choices could be made on the basis of inaccurate or misleading information.

Practitioners have a duty of care to ensure that patients receive a level of information appropriate to their level of understanding and ability to absorb knowledge, and longstanding legal precedents are established to ensure that risks as well as benefits of treatment are discussed with patients.