impact of disgust on intentions to undergo colorectal surgery background surgeons present patients with complex information at the perioperative appointment emotions likely play a role in surgical decisionmaking and disgust is an emotion of revulsion at a stimulus that can lead to avoidanceobjective the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of disgust on intention to undergo surgical resection for colorectal cancer and recall of perioperative instructionsdesign this was a crosssectional observational study conducted online using hypothetical scenarios with nonpatient subjectssettings the study was conducted using amazons mechanical turkpatients survey respondents were living in the united statesmain outcome measures surgery intention and recall of perioperative instructions were measuredresults a total of 319 participants met the inclusion criteria participants in the experimental condition who were provided with detailed information and pictures about stoma care had significantly lower surgery intentions mean sd 460115 compared with the control condition with no stoma prompt mean sd 514091 p 005 and significantly lower recall for preoperative instructions mean sd 1375238 compared with the control condition mean sd 1436219 p 003 those within the experimental conditions also reported significantly higher state levels of disgust mean sd 408174 compared with a control condition mean sd 235138 p 0001 statelevel disgust was found to fully mediate the relationship between condition and recall b 031 and to partially mediate the effect of condition on surgery intentions b 017limitations it is unknown whether these results will replicate with patients and the impact of competing emotions in clinical settingsconclusions intentions to undergo colorectal surgery and recall of preoperative instructions are diminished in patients who experience disgust when presented with stoma information surgeons and care teams must account for this as they perform perioperative counseling to minimize interference with recall of important perioperative information see video abstract at