Patient Preference on Age-Related Macular Degeneration Treatment: A Systematic Review.

Purpose: Patient preference is important in decision-making processes, such as drug approval and price determination. We conducted a systematic review regarding the preference of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) treatment. Patients and Methods: We searched for articles on patient preferences for AMD treatment published between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2023 using EMBASE, Google scholar, MEDLINE, and PLOS. Results: Seven studies were included in this systematic review. Conjoint analysis was used in all seven trials, of which six were Discrete Choice Experiments and one was a ranking. These studies were conducted in Germany, United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, and Singapore. Six studies focused on patients with neovascular AMD (nAMD, also called wet AMD, ie, wAMD), and one focused on patients with nAMD or diabetic macular edema. The attributes of the treatments used in these seven studies were efficacy, safety, convenience, and cost. Overall, the relative importance of attributes related to efficacy and safety were the highest, followed by those related to convenience and costs. The convenience and cost attributes were almost equal. Conclusion: Although the definitions of treatment attributes differed among the studies, patients with nAMD considered efficacy and safety to be the most important. The results of several studies suggest that patient preferences may be affected by patient demographics, such as sex. Although there are currently only a few preference studies on patients with AMD, it is necessary to continue conducting studies to understand the trends in patient preferences according to patient demographics.