Patient Preferences Regarding Benefits and Harms of Advanced Prostate Cancer Treatments in Switzerland

Patient preferences are an important consideration in clinical medicine and health services research and are rapidly gaining importance on a regulatory level in determining the value of novel drugs or technologies to patients and healthcare systems. Whether the benefits of a treatment outweigh its harms for an individual patient often depends on the patient's preferences. Advanced prostate cancer is one of the areas in which the optimal choice of treatment is likely to depend on patient preferences, as patients face a difficult decision between undergoing chemotherapy or taking one of the novel hormonal agents.

We will conduct a patient preference study regarding the benefits and harms of advanced prostate cancer treatment in Switzerland. The study aims at deriving preference values that reflect the trade-offs between expected benefits and potential harms of the different cancer drugs used in advanced prostate cancer from a patient perspective. We assess preferences both in prostate cancer patients and men over 45 years without cancer history, and investigate preference heterogeneity between individuals and important subgroups.

This study is one of the first to elicit patient preferences related to prostate cancer treatment in Switzerland and will provide important insights into how advanced prostate cancer patients value the trade-offs between the benefits and harms of their treatment. Furthermore, this study will provide a valuable experience for eliciting patient preferences in Switzerland and for incorporating information from patient preference studies in benefit-harm assessment and health technology assessment.