Ronnie Shammas

Ronnie Shammas was born and raised in North Carolina, and attended North Carolina State University for his undergraduate education, majoring in Human Biology. He then received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine, prior to matriculating into the integrated plastic surgery program at Duke University.

He is currently a resident in the integrated plastic surgery program at Duke University. He is interested in health services research related to post-oncologic reconstruction. Specifically, his current research is focused on improving shared-decision making in order to reduce decisional conflict and regret with treatment decisions. This sawtooth software grant will support the development of a patient decision aid for patients undergoing post-mastectomy breast reconstruction. The decisions surrounding breast reconstruction involve trade-offs between multiple simultaneous concerns (i.e. cost, complications, recovery time) to arrive at a treatment that is reflective of personal preferences and values. Thus, it is essential to understand which aspects of breast reconstruction care are most important to each patient when making patient-centered treatment decisions. By utilizing conjoint analysis, the relative importance of various treatment attributes can be determined and communicated to the provider to better align treatment preferences with the ultimate outcome. In the context of breast reconstruction, conjoint analysis can determine which attributes of reconstructive surgery are most important to a patient when communicating the shared treatment decision and can be used as part of a shared decision-making tool to facilitate patient-physician communication and individualize breast reconstruction care. Through this research, we will utilize conjoint analysis to assess how patients value different aspects of breast reconstruction and will use these findings to develop a unique shared decision-making tool (RECONJOINT) that will help prioritize patient preferences for breast reconstruction and communicate these preferences to the provider. Our long-term goal is to develop a clinically relevant tool that will improve patient satisfaction, decision quality, and mitigate regret after breast reconstruction.