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Background: Patients with a diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) may face important decisions regarding treatment options, with the "right choice" depending on the relative weights of risks and benefits. Studies performed as discrete choice experiments are used to estimate these weights, and attribute selection is an essential step in the design of these studies. Attributes not included in the design cannot be analyzed. In this study, we aimed to elicit, rank, and rate attributes that may be considered important to patients and physicians who must choose between angioplasty and surgery for coronary revascularization. Methods: The elicitation process involved performing a systematic review to search for attributes cited in declared preference studies in addition to face-to-face interviews with cardiologists and experts. The interviews were audio-recorded in digital format, and the collected data were transcribed and searched to identify new attributes. The criterion used to finish the data collection process was sampling saturation. Results: A systematic review resulted in the selection of the following 14 attributes: atrial fibrillation, heart failure, incision scar, length of stay, long-term survival, myocardial infarction, periprocedural death, postoperative infection, postprocedural angina, pseudoaneurysm, renal failure, repeat coronary artery bypass grafting, repeat percutaneous coronary intervention, and stroke. The interviews added no new attributes. After rating, we identified significant differences in the values that patients and cardiologists placed on renal insufficiency (p<0.001), periprocedural death (p<0.001), and long-term survival (p<0.001). Conclusion: Decisions regarding the best treatment option for patients with CAD should be made based on differences in risk and the patient's preference regarding the most relevant endpoints. We elicited, ranked, and rated 14 attributes related to CAD treatment options. This list of attributes may help researchers who seek to perform future preference studies of CAD treatment options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Communicating information about risk and probability to patients is considered a difficult task. In this study, we aim to evaluate the use of visual aids representing perioperative mortality and long-term survival in the communication process for patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease at the National Institute of Cardiology, a Brazilian public hospital specializing in cardiology. Patients and methods: One-on-one interviews were conducted between August 1 and November 20, 2017. Patients were asked to imagine that their doctor was seeking their input in the decision regarding which treatment represented the best option for them. Patients were required to choose between alternatives by considering only the different benefits and risks shown in each scenario, described as the proportion of patients who had died during the perioperative period and within 5 years. Each participant evaluated the same eight scenarios. We evaluated their answers in a qualitative and quantitative analysis. Results: The main findings were that all patients verbally expressed concern about perioperative mortality and that 25% did not express concern about long-term mortality. Twelve percent considered the probabilities irrelevant on the grounds that their prognosis would depend on "God's will." Ten percent of the patients disregarded the reported likelihood of perioperative mortality, deciding to focus solely on the "chance of being cured." In the quantitative analysis, the vast majority of respondents chose the "correct" alternatives, meaning that they made consistent and rational choices. Conclusion: The use of visual aids to present risk attributes appeared feasible in our sample. The impact of heuristics and religious beliefs on shared health decision making needs to be explored better in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Brazilian public health system does not include computed tomography angiography (CTA)., Objective: Rank, according to the Brazilian public health system, the cost-effectiveness of different strategies for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD), combining exercise tests (ET), myocardial scintigraphy (MS), stress echocardiography (SE), and CTA in a hypothetical intermediate pre-test probability cohort of patients., Methods: This study implemented a cost-effectiveness analysis through a decision tree. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and net benefit were analyzed by adopting multiple thresholds of willingness to pay, from 0.05 to 1 GDP per capita per correct diagnosis. In sequential tests, a second confirmatory test was performed only when the first was positive., Results: After excluding dominated or extended dominance diagnostic strategies, the efficiency frontier consisted of three strategies: ET, ET followed by SE, and SE followed by CTA, the last being the most cost-effective strategy. Through the net benefit, the ranking of the most cost-effective strategies varied according to willingness to pay., Conclusions: Using current concepts of health technology assessment, this study provides a ranking for decision-making concerning which diagnostic strategy to use in a population with an intermediate pre-test risk for CAD. With a feasible cost estimate adopted for CTA, the impact of including this to the list of the diagnostic arsenal would represent a cost-effective strategy in most of the evaluated scenarios with broad variations in the willingness to pay.

Background: Selecting the optimal treatment strategy for coronary revascularization is challenging. A crucial endpoint to be considered when making this choice is the necessity to repeat revascularization since it is much more frequent after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) than after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG)., Objective: This study intends to provide insights on patients' preferences for revascularization, strategies in the perspective of patients who had to repeat revascularization., Methods: We selected a sample of patients who had undergone PCI and were hospitalized to repeat coronary revascularization and elicited their preferences for a new PCI or CABG. Perioperative death, long-term death, myocardial infarction, and repeat revascularization were used to design scenarios describing hypothetical treatments that were labeled as PCI or CABG. PCI was always presented as the option with lower perioperative death risk and a higher necessity to repeat procedure. A conditional logit model was used to analyze patients' choices using R software. A p value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant., Results: A total of 144 patients participated, most of them (73.7%) preferred CABG over PCI (p < 0.001). The regression coefficients were statistically significant for PCI label, PCI long-term death, CABG perioperative death, CABG long-term death and repeat CABG. The PCI label was the most important parameter (p < 0.05)., Conclusion: Most patients who face the necessity to repeat coronary revascularization reject a new PCI, considering realistic levels of risks and benefits. Incorporating patients' preferences into benefit-risk calculation and treatment recommendations could enhance patient-centered care.