Patients with cirrhosis prioritize early HCC detection
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Patients with cirrhosis prioritize early-detection over factors like convenience when it comes to hepatocellular carcinoma surveillance, according to study results.
Neehar Parikh, MD, from the North American Liver Cancer Consortium and Michigan Medicine, and colleagues wrote that emerging HCC surveillance techniques have provided more options for patients, including blood tests and abbreviated MRI.
“The choice between HCC surveillance methods can be complex, as it is influenced by several factors including potential benefits, risks and convenience,” they wrote. “Further, there are tradeoffs that must be considered.”
Researchers sought to measure preference among patients with cirrhosis (n = 179) on HCC surveillance modalities by conducting a choice-based conjoint survey. They provided patients with 15 scenarios wherein they were asked to choose between surveillance techniques based on five test attributes: benefits, such as sensitivity for early HCC detection; physical harm, like false positives; financial harm; test logistics and convenience.
Parikh and colleagues determined the importance of each attribute and used a simulation to determine patient preference shares.
The most important attribute was surveillance benefits (importance 51.3%; 95% CI, 49-53.4%), followed by test logistics, financial harm, convenience and physical harm.
Based on their simulations, Parikh and colleagues determined that patients preferred abbreviated MRI (29%), MRI (23.3%), or novel blood-based biomarkers (20.9%) over ultrasound alone (3.4%) or with alpha fetoprotein (8.8%).
“Although these relationships were generally maintained across patient subgroups, patients of Hispanic ethnicity placed greater importance on financial harms and convenience than their counterparts when determining preferred surveillance strategies,” Parikh and colleagues wrote. “These data, and the corresponding simulator, are valuable for understanding patient preferences for a personalized HCC surveillance plan.”