The eight questions
| 1 | How important is it to you to postpone having an operation on your aorta for as long as the doctors think it is safe to do so? |
| 2 | How important is it to you to avoid taking anticoagulant (blood thinning) medication? |
| 3 | How important is it to you, if you need to have an operation on your aorta, to get on with it and have it behind you? |
| 4 | How important is it to you to avoid lifelong medication such as beta blockers or losartan? |
| 5 | How important is it to you to avoid repeated visits to the hospital for tests? |
| 6 | How important is to you to have a physically active lifestyle? |
| 7 | How important is it to you to avoid anticoagulation which might be an obstacle to having a baby? (Men may answer.) |
| 8 | How important is it to you to have no noise from your heart valve? |
For the purposes of the study, these questions were set out as a web form (see online supplementary file 1). In clinical practice, this could be presented to the patient (paper or electronic) to take home with sufficient time and space to write in their reflections. It would then be a document for discussion, representing a personal profile of the values brought to the consultation, based on whatever prior knowledge, experience or assumptions the patient might have. For the format of the questionnaire see the web supplement.