VIDEO: Personalized approach key to balancing preventative vs. on-demand HAE treatments

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It's is a good question because there are these different strategies. I would say first every patient needs on-demand treatment, so that's sort of step one, regardless of what else we do, whatever else. If you have this diagnosis of HAE, one needs to have an effective on-demand treatment, so everybody gets that.

From there it's really a tailored conversation, an individualized decision with the patient and the physician specialist where we sort of talk through the options that we have for preventative treatment. We also look at how the angioedema is affecting the patient's life, so that includes obvious things like how often are they having angioedema attacks, what types of attacks are they having?

You know, is it the face, is it the airway, is it the intestinal tract? How severe and debilitating are those attacks? And how are they affecting the patient's ability to work, to go to school, to travel, to do social activities and hobbies? And then, what are their concerns about side effects with any of the medicines, and how well will they be able to adhere to the treatment plan that's needed for preventative therapy.

So it's a long answer but that's kind of the point. It's very individualized. There's no formula, per se, to sort of pick this person goes on preventative treatment and this person just treats their attacks, and we use shared decision-making, so I can be the expert in HAE, but the patient is the expert in their experience in how the disease affects them, and so we bring those pieces together and really come to a decision with discussion based on those options, and so, many patients these days, probably the majority, are electing to go on preventative treatments, but there's still a subset of patients, I don't know the exact number, but maybe 25, 30% of patients just treat the attacks when they occur because that's their preferred management approach. It's very individualized, and that's on purpose because everybody with HAE is sort of different and it affects them differently.