Patient Preferences Associated with Anti-Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Therapies for Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration and Diabetic Macular Edema.

To evaluate treatment-related preferences among patients receiving intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) or diabetic macular edema (DME). We conducted a prospective survey of patients with nAMD or DME treated at one of three US-based retina clinics. Prior to survey development, small focus groups with anti-VEGF-treated patients identified five treatment-related "attributes" considered important to those with nAMD or DME: vision outcomes, cost to the insurance provider, cost to the patient, frequency of treatment, and drug label status. Attributes were described using two to three "levels", and hypothetical treatment profiles were generated by assigning one level to each attribute. Surveyed patients were asked to indicate their preference between two given treatment profiles for a total of eight pairwise comparisons. Discrete choice conjoint analysis was performed to estimate the relative importance of each attribute for the overall patient cohort, and for subgroups stratified by age and highest education level. Among 300 respondents, 54% were female, 78% were aged ≥65 years, and 67% indicated that high school was their highest level of education. Achieving good vision was the most important factor associated with anti-VEGF therapy for nAMD or DME (relative importance, 40.4%), followed by low cost to the patient, on-label drug status, less frequent treatment intervals, and low cost to the insurance provider (23.1%, 21.3%, 12.2%, and 3.0%, respectively). When patients were stratified by age group or highest education level, preference trends across subgroups were generally comparable with the overall cohort. Our data suggest that treatment decisions regarding anti-VEGF therapies for nAMD or DME are most likely driven by their efficacy, and that patients may be willing to accept less desirable treatment attributes, such as increased cost and/or injection frequency, in order to achieve superior vision outcomes.

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© 2020 Bhagat et al.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Dr Meena George has served on the advisory board of Allergan, outside the submitted work. Dr Veeral S Sheth has served as a consultant for Alimera, Eyepoint, Genentech, Inc., Notal Vision, and Novartis; and reports personal fees from Genentech, Novartis, Alimera, Notal Vision, and Eyepoint, and grant support from Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Chengdu Kanghong Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Graybug Vision, Inc., Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Outlook Therapeutics, and Regeneron, outside the submitted work. The authors report no other conflicts of interest with respect to this work.