Anticoagulation treatment in cancer-Associated venous thromboembolism: Assessment of patient preferences using a discrete choice experiment (cosimo study)

Introduction â Clinical guidelines recommend anticoagulation therapy for the treatment of cancer-Associated venous thromboembolism (VTE), but little is known about preferences. Therefore, the objective of this discrete choice experiment (DCE) was to elucidate patient preferences regarding anticoagulation convenience attributes. Methods â Adult patients with cancer-Associated VTE who switched to direct oral anticoagulants were included in a single-Arm study (COSIMO). Patients were asked to decide between hypothetical treatment options based on a combination of the following attributes: route of administration (injection/tablet), frequency of intake (once/twice daily), need for regular controls of the international normalized ratio (INR) at least every 3 to 4 weeks (yes/no), interactions with food/alcohol (yes/no), and distance to treating physician (1 vs. 20 km) as an additional neutral attribute. DCE data were collected by structured telephone interviews and analyzed based on a conditional logit regression. Results â Overall, 163 patients (mean age 63.7 years, 49.1% female) were included. They strongly preferred oral administration compared with self-injections (importance of this attribute for overall treatment decisions: 73.8%), and a treatment without dietary restrictions (11.8%). Even if these attributes were less important (7.2% and 6.5%, respectively), patients indicated a preference for a shorter distance to the treating physician and once-daily dosing compared with twice-daily intake. Need for regular controls of INR at least every 3 to 4 weeks showed no significant impact on the treatment decision (0.7%). Conclusion â This study showed that treatment-related decision making in cancer-Associated VTE, assuming comparable effectiveness and safety of anticoagulant treatments, is predominantly driven by route of administration, with patients strongly preferring oral administration.