Patient Preference Studies for Advanced Prostate Cancer Treatment Along the Medical Product Life Cycle: Systematic Literature Review

Dominik Menges; Michela C Piatti; Thomas Cerny; Milo A Puhan

doi:10.2147/PPA.S362802

Patient Preference Studies for Advanced Prostate Cancer Treatment Along the Medical Product Life Cycle: Systematic Literature Review

Patient Prefer Adherence. 2022 Jun 28:16:1539-1557. doi: 10.2147/PPA.S362802. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Dominik Menges¹, Michela C Piatti¹, Thomas Cerny^{2

3}, Milo A Puhan¹

Affiliations

¹ Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute (EBPI), University of Zurich (UZH), Zurich, Switzerland.
² Foundation Board, Cancer Research Switzerland (Krebsforschung Schweiz KFS), Bern, Switzerland.
³ Human Medicines Expert Committee (HMEC), Swissmedic, Bern, Switzerland.

Abstract

Background: Patient preference studies can inform decision-making across all stages of the medical product life cycle (MPLC). The treatment landscape for advanced prostate cancer (APC) treatment has substantially changed in recent years. However, the most patient-relevant aspects of APC treatment remain unclear. This systematic review of patient preference studies in APC aimed to summarize the evidence on patient preferences and patient-relevant aspects of APC treatments, and to evaluate the potential contribution of existing studies to decision-making within the respective stages of the MPLC.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE for studies evaluating patient preferences related to APC treatment up to October 2020. Two reviewers independently performed screening, data extraction and quality assessment in duplicate. We descriptively summarized the findings and analyzed the studies regarding their contribution within the MPLC using an analytical framework.

Results: Seven quantitative preference studies were included. One study each was conducted in the marketing approval and the health technology assessment (HTA) and reimbursement stage, and five were conducted in the post-marketing stage of the MPLC. While almost all stated to inform clinical practice, the specific contributions to clinical decision-making remained unclear for almost all studies. Evaluated attributes related to benefits, harms, and other treatment-related aspects and their relative importance varied relevantly between studies. All studies were judged of high quality overall, but some methodological issues regarding sample selection and the definition of patient-relevant treatment attributes were identified.

Conclusion: The most patient-relevant aspects regarding the benefits and harms of APC treatment are not yet established, and it remains unclear which APC treatments are preferred by patients. Findings from this study highlight the importance of transparent reporting and discussion of study findings according to their aims and with respect to their stage within the MPLC. Future research may benefit from using the MPLC framework for analyzing or determining the aims and design of patient preference studies.

Keywords: benefit-harm assessment; medical product life cycle; patient preferences; patient-centered care; preference research; prostate cancer; systematic review.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the Swiss Cancer Research Foundation (Stiftung Krebsforschung Schweiz, Bern, Switzerland; Health Services Research Grant No. HSR-4950-11-2019) and the Swiss Cancer Foundation (Zug, Switzerland). The salary of Dominik Menges was covered by a fellowship by the Béatrice Ederer-Weber Foundation (Zurich, Switzerland). The study funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, decision to publish, or writing of this report.