Abstract 42: Understanding Treatment Preferences For Patients With Tricuspid Regurgitation

Background: A quantitative patient preference study aims to understand tricuspid regurgitation (TR) patients’ priorities for symptom relief and treatment risk-benefit tradeoffs. Methods: 150 clinically confirmed moderate or greater TR patients completed a discrete choice experiment survey online to elicit their preferences. Attributes (levels) tested were treatment (procedure, medical management), re-intervention risk (0%, 1%, 5%, 10%), medications in 2 yrs (none, reduce, same, more), shortness of breath (none/mild, moderate, severe) and swelling (never, 3x a week, daily). A mixed logit regression (MXL) model estimated preferences. MXL choice model calculated predicted probabilities. Results: Shortness of breath contributed 66% to patients’ treatment decision making over other attributes. Patients’ predicted probability of preferring a procedure-like profile over a medical management-like profile was 99.7% and it was 78.9% for a medical management shortness of breath level change (Table 1). Subgroup analysis showed that patients over 64 yrs old preferred to more strongly avoid severe shortness of breath compared to under 65 (p<0.02), as did severe or worse TR patients over moderate. NYHA Class I/II patients more strongly preferred to avoid procedural re-intervention risk of 10% over Class III/IV (p<0.03). Conclusion: TR patients prioritize improving shortness of breath and are willing to accept higher procedural re-intervention risk if it is alleviated, even to a small degree.