APHRODITE Patient Preference

Status: Open

Specialty: Colorectal

Date Opened: 12/12/2019

Planned Close Date: 30/05/2025

Sponsor: CTRU - University of Leeds

Principal Investigator: Dr Deborah Williamson

Study Title: How do patients make decisions about rectal cancer treatment?

Many rectal cancer patients are ineligible for surgery, and so will receive radiotherapy instead. Higher doses of radiotherapy improve the efficacy of treatment by increasing the probability of tumours disappearing, but also mean greater toxicity and worse side effects. However, there is an almost complete lack of understanding of how patients weight and prioritise different potential outcomes, including the balance between efficacy and toxicity. We therefore plan to conduct a survey to measure patient preferences for different attributes of treatment. It will use discrete choice experiment (DCE) methodology in which respondents make choices between hypothetical treatments characterised by a set of attributes and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. We also intend to request participants repeat the survey after experiencing treatment, to see whether their preferences have changed.

To aid the logistics of survey distribution, it will be administered at the same time and in the same locations as APHRODITE, a clinical trial examining whether a higher radiotherapy dose gives better patient outcomes with acceptable side effects.

This will also give the opportunity to combine (with patient consent) survey results with data from the clinical trial in order to explore how preferences are influenced by experience of treatment.