Patient preferences regarding prophylactic cranial irradiation: A discrete choice experiment

Health preference research: An overview for medical radiation sciences

Understanding preferences of key stakeholders including patients, clinicians and policymakers can inform clinical practice, workforce and policy. It also allows health services to evaluate existing clinical practices, policies and procedures. This commentary aims to introduce medical radiation professionals to health preference research by describing commonly used preference methodologies, with a particular focus on discrete choice experiments. Relevant examples of health preference research will be highlighted to demonstrate the application of health preference research in medical radiation sciences.

Shared decision-making for prophylactic cranial irradiation in extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer: an exploratory study

Background

Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) offers extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) patients a lower chance of brain metastasis and slightly longer survival but is associated with a short-term decline in quality of life due to side-effects. This tradeoff between survival and quality of life makes PCI suitable for shared decision-making (SDM), where patients and clinicians make treatment decisions together based on clinical evidence and patient preferences. Despite recent clinical practice guidelines recommending SDM for PCI in ES-SCLC, as well as the heavy disease burden, research into SDM for lung cancer has been scarce. This exploratory study presents patients’ experiences of the SDM process and decisional conflict for PCI.

Methods

Radiation oncologists (n=7) trained in SDM applied it in making the PCI decision with ES-SCLC patients (n=25). We measured patients’ preferred level of participation (Control Preferences Scale), the level of SDM according to both groups (SDM-Q-9 and SDM-Q-Doc), and patients’ decisional conflict [decisional conflict scale (DCS)].

Results

Seventy-nine percent of patients preferred a collaborative role in decision-making, and median SDM scores given by patients and clinicians were 80 (IQR: 75.6–91.1) and 85.2 (IQR: 78.7–88.9) respectively, indicating satisfaction with the process. However, patients experienced considerable decisional conflict. Over 50% lacked clarity about which choice was suitable for them and were unsure what to choose. Sixty-four percent felt they did not know enough about the harms and benefits of PCI, and 60% felt unable to judge the importance of the harms/benefits in their life.

Conclusions

ES-SCLC patients prefer to be involved in their treatment choice for PCI but a substantial portion experiences decisional conflict. Better information provision and values clarification may support patients in making a choice that reflects their preferences.

Quantitative Preferences for Lung Cancer Treatment from the Patients' Perspective: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

Regulatory agencies as well as private organizations pursue programs that advocate patient centricity and emphasize the importance of dialog with patients. Various methods are applied to elicit the preferences of patients regarding the aspects of treatment they lend more importance to. Decisions on treatment choices are critical to patients with lung cancer because of their poor prognosis and the serious trade-off between safety and efficacy in traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic literature review of quantitative patient preference studies of patients with lung cancer. Our exhaustive search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, PLOS, and SpringerLink identified 15 relevant studies published from January 2000 to April 2020 that enabled us to assess the relative importance of treatment attributes according to lung cancer patients' perspective.

RESULTS

The literature review revealed that patients with lung cancer tend to place a higher weight on efficacy and quality of life (QoL) attributes than on other attributes. Overall survival was found to be the most important among the efficacy attributes. The consequences of adverse events seemed less important than the possible efficacy from therapies. The clinical utility of treatment, such as the route of administration, was generally not considered important. It remains inconclusive whether sociodemographic factors and/or medical history affect the relative importance of a patient's preference.

CONCLUSION

Our systematic review clarified that patients generally prefer a better efficacy profile to a better safety profile, which underscores the importance of improved benefits in anti-lung cancer drug development.

Patient Preferences for Attributes of Chemotherapy for Lung Cancer: Discrete Choice Experiment Study in Japan

Our study objective was to determine lung cancer chemotherapy attributes that are important to patients in Japan. A discrete choice experiment survey in an anonymous web-based questionnaire format with a reward was completed by 200 lung cancer patients in Japan from November 25, 2019, to November 27, 2019. The relative importance of patient preferences for each attribute was estimated using a conditional logit model. A hierarchical Bayesian logit model was also used to estimate the impact of each demographic characteristic on the relative importance of each attribute. Of the 200 respondents, 191 with consistent responses were included in the analysis. In their preference, overall survival was the most important, followed by diarrhea, nausea, rash, bone marrow suppression (BMS), progression-free survival, fatigue, interstitial lung disease, frequency of administration, and duration of administration. The preferences were influenced by demographic characteristics (e.g., gender and age) and disease background (e.g., cancer type and stage). Interestingly, the experience of cancer drug therapies and adverse events had a substantial impact on the hypothetical drug preferences. For the Japanese lung cancer patients, improved survival was the most important attribute that influenced their preference for chemotherapy, followed by adverse events, including diarrhea, nausea, rash, and BMS. The preferences varied depending on the patient’s demographic and experience. As drug attributes can affect patient preferences, pharmaceutical companies should be aware of the patient preferences and develop drugs that respond to segmented market needs.

Strategies to prevent brain metastasis

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The current article reviews the state of art of prevention strategies for brain metastases from solid tumors and touches both old pivotal studies and new directions of personalized molecular approaches.

RECENT FINDINGS

Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) has a definite role in the prevention of relapse into the brain for patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) responding to chemotherapy and radiotherapy as it prolongs overall survival (OS). However, the risk of late cognitive deficit following whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) in this patient population is still not well known. Conversely, PCI significantly reduces the incidence of brain metastases and prolongs the disease-free interval in patients with non-SCLC (NSCLC), but does not improve OS thus far. Pharmacologic prevention is a new concept driven by the efficacy of targeted agents on macrometastases from specific molecular subgroups.

SUMMARY

The future challenges for prevention of brain metastases are represented by the identification of subgroups of patients at higher risk of relapse into the brain coupled with either new WBRT strategies to better preserve cognition or effective molecular agents to target micrometastases.

Factors influencing the utilization of prophylactic cranial irradiation in patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer

Purpose

Brain metastases are common in patients with limited-stage small cell lung cancer (LS-SCLC) due to the inability of most chemotherapeutics to penetrate the blood–brain barrier. Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) is therefore recommended for use in patients with a good response to concurrent chemoradiotherapy. However, PCI is not always delivered; therefore, we investigated the reasons for PCI omission in patients who underwent therapy with curative intent.

Methods and materials

We retrospectively reviewed all patients with LS-SCLC who were treated with curative intent at our institution. Overall survival and cumulative incidence of brain metastasis were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. The Pearson χ² test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to examine factors associated with PCI use, and prognostic factors were analyzed with Cox proportional hazards modeling.

Results

We examined 208 patients who were treated for LS-SCLC at our institution. A total of 115 patients (55%) received PCI. The most common documented reason for PCI omission was patient refusal due to neurotoxicity concerns (38%). Physician assessment of being medically unfit (33%) and of advanced age (8%) were the second and third most common reasons, respectively. Karnofsky performance status and clinical American Joint Committee on Cancer stage but not PCI were significantly associated with overall survival. Only clinical stage remained an independent factor on multivariate analysis.

Conclusions

Approximately half of patients with LS-SCLC ultimately receive PCI, generally for guideline-recommended reasons. The most common reason for PCI omission was patient concerns regarding neurotoxicity. Efforts to decrease PCI neurotoxicity, including hippocampal-sparing radiation and memantine use, may increase the use of this survival-improving intervention in eligible patients with LS-SCLC.

Patterns of failure in limited-stage small cell lung cancer: Implications of TNM stage for prophylactic cranial irradiation

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

The relationship between tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage and patterns of failure in limited-stage small cell lung cancer (LS-SCLC) remains unclear. We hypothesized that TNM stage predicts brain metastasis risk, and could inform the use of prophylactic cranial irradiation.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

We reviewed 283 patients with stage I-IIIB SCLC. Competing-risks regression was used to analyze local, distant, and brain failure. Multivariate analysis was used to evaluate the effect of treatment and clinical factors on failure and OS.

RESULTS

Patients with stage I or II SCLC (35% of cohort) had significantly better survival and lower risk of distant and brain metastasis, compared with stage III patients. The 5-year cumulative incidence of brain metastasis for stage I/II and III were 12% and 26%, respectively. Stage had no correlation with local failure. On multivariate analysis, stage was independently prognostic for survival, distant metastasis risk, and brain metastasis risk.

CONCLUSIONS

TNM staging predicts likelihood of distant metastasis, brain metastasis, and survival in LS-SCLC. This supports the routine use of TNM staging in clinical practice. The lower risk of brain metastasis in stage I and II SCLC suggests that prophylactic cranial irradiation could play a more limited role in treatment of early-stage disease.