Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To investigate treatment preferences of Japanese patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (la/mUC). DESIGN: A discrete-choice experiment survey methodology was used to elicit patient preferences for attributes of la/mUC treatment, including adverse events (nausea/vomiting, neuropathy, alopecia and maculopapular rash), hospital stay requirements for treatment administration and overall survival. A multinomial logistic regression model was used to estimate treatment preferences. Coefficients of the model were then used to calculate the relative importance of each treatment attribute. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Participants were recruited through healthcare facilities with urology departments across Japan. RESULTS: The study included 109 patients (72.5% male; mean (SD) age, 71.3 (8.9) years). Patients preferred treatments that minimised adverse events that could affect their daily activities, had a more favourable survival profile and did not require hospital stays for administration. Neuropathy emerged as the most important attribute to patients when making treatment decisions (relative attribute importance (RAI), 27.7%), followed by nausea/vomiting (RAI, 27.3%), maculopapular rash (RAI, 16.5%), hospital stay requirements (RAI, 12.1%), alopecia (RAI, 8.2%) and overall survival (RAI, 8.1%). Findings were similar across various subgroup analyses, though patients who were chemotherapy-experienced prioritised avoidance of neuropathy and nausea/vomiting more highly than those who were chemotherapy-naïve. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, Japanese patients with la/mUC were more concerned about reduced quality of life due to adverse events than extending survival by 6 months. Patients, clinicians and other members of the care team need to communicate frequently and candidly about a patient's well-being.