In our book we offer multiple BRCTs that illustrate the absolute risks and benefits of a variety of common medical interventions, from cancer screening, to medications, to diagnostic tests, to procedures.  The BRCT is a straightforward method of comprehending individual risk/benefit by showing how many people are impacted by a certain intervention in the context of a theater.  Out of a 1,000 seat theater, the number of seats blackened represents the number of people who may derive benefit or suffer harm from the intervention based on current medical literature.  Since most people are familiar with a theater diagram, the BRCT allows people to better understand their risk and benefit visually through a lens that they can easily understand.  For instance, it is fairly easy for most people to distinguish between the two theaters below, one of which depicts the benefit of getting life-time mammograms, the other depicting the benefit of not smoking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each BRCT can be individualized to specific circumstance, and can be used by doctors and patients to facilitate medical discussions and shared decision making.  Overall, BRCTs can help reduce over-treatment and over-testing by allowing for a personalized assessment of interventions by doctors and patients. The BRCT is also an ideal way for medical students to learn about risk/benefit discourse, for media outlets to present medical information that is accurate and easily comprehended, and for insurance companies to provide pragmatic information to their doctors and patients that enable discussions in the office.  In this section we have included a sample of some BRCTs themselves without the text or references.  We are also able to make BRCTs for other clinical situations that are not in our book; this concept is customizable and can be altered as new data becomes available or even for different patients based on their particular medical histories.  We have included several sections of BRCTs:

 

• Cancer Screening

• Diagnostic Tests

• Medications

• Medical Studies that have been in the media recently

 

Click on any of the above options to see a few sample BRCTs.  Please contact us if you would like to see a sample of what we can do with the BRCTs to help you.