Older persons grew up in a culture where decision making was more paternalistic. This may either lead to a lower information need or to a risk for poor communication. Research indicates that patient preferences and information needs differ widely. Patient information should target older patients’ needs, in order to prepare them to the prescribed treatment and to help them deal with adverse effects [7].

The majority of older adults must also cope with growing limitations in the physical and cognitive functioning along with age progresses. However cognitive decline due to aging, may limit the understanding and memorization of complex information; this might imply that the need for further information may be inhibited [8]. As a result of this, patients may feel distressed due to the difficulties in understanding what is happening along their clinical course. In the communication with family and friends, stress can also worsen when patients become incapable of understanding the consequences of their decisions [9].

Older patients have unmet communication needs as serious gaps in recalling and understanding may occur during psychological and physical health crisis [9]. A possible explanation for this is that older adults have unique language, cognitive, psychological, and social issues that affect their own health ability to read and write [10]. Unfulfilled information needs may cause non-compliance, and this is an important risk factor for the outcome of the medical treatment.

Patient’s coping strategies have been described as influencing their information needs [11]. Each single individual will differ in his/her coping styles (and information needs): this can influence the patient’s requests and behaviour. According to Miller et al. [12], individuals can use two main cognitive coping styles in dealing with cancer and other health threats: monitoring (attending to) or blunting (avoiding) potentially threatening information. Individuals may use either coping style at different moments [12]. Patients fare better (psychologically, behaviourally, and physiologically) when the information they receive about their medical condition is tailored to their own coping style: generally those with a monitoring style tend to do better when given more information, and those with a blunting style do better with less information. To explicitly judge patients in advance on their preferences, the following questions may be helpful: ‘Do you generally think ‘I want to know every detail’ or do you tend to say ‘I’ll will just see what is going to happen’? [13].