This is a bit of an odd trial. Ostensibly, this is a trial about the evaluation and disposition of low-risk chest pain presenting to the Emergency Department. The authors frame their discussion section by describing their combination of objective risk-stratification and shared decision-making in terms of reducing admission for observation and testing at the index visit.
But, that’s not technically what this trial was about. Technically, this was a trial about patient comprehension – the primary outcome is actually the number of questions correctly answered by patients on an immediate post-visit survey. The dual nature of their trial is evident in their power calculation, which starts with: “We estimated that 884 patients would provide 99% power to detect a 16% difference in patient knowledge between decision aid and usual care arms”, which is an unusual choice of beta and threshold for effect size – basically one additional question correct on their eight-question survey. The rest of their power calculation, however, makes sense “… and 90% power to detect a 10% difference in the proportion of patients admitted to an observation unit for cardiac testing.” It appears the trial was not conducted to test their primary outcome selected by their patient advocates designing the trial, but in actuality to test the secondary outcomes thought important to the clinicians.
So, it is a little hard to interpret their favorable result with respect to the primary outcome – 3.6 vs 4.2 questions answered correctly. After clinicians spent an extra 1.3 minutes (4.4 vs 3.1) with patients showing them a visual aid specific to their condition, I am not surprised patients had better comprehension of their treatment options – and they probably did not require a multi-center trial to prove this.
Then, the crossover between resource utilization and shared decision-making seems potentially troublesome. An idealized version of shared decision-making allows patients to participate in their treatment when there is substantial individual variation between the perceived value of different risks, benefits, and alternatives. However, I am not certain these patients are being invited to share in a decision between choices of equal value – and the authors seem to express this through their presentation of the results.
These are all patients without known coronary disease, normal EKGs, a negative initial cardiac troponin, and considered by treating clinicians to otherwise fall into a “low risk” population. This is a population matching the cohort of interest from Weinstock’s study of patients hospitalized for observation from the Emergency Department, 7,266 patients of whom none independently suffered a cardiac event while hospitalized. A trial in British Columbia deferred admission for a cohort of patients in favor of outpatient stress tests. By placing a fair bit of emphasis on their significant secondary finding of a reduction in observation admission from 52% to 37%, the authors seems to indicate their underlying bias is consistent with the evidence demonstrating the safety of outpatient disposition in this cohort. In short, it seems to me the authors are not using their decision aid to help patients choose between equally valued clinical pathways, but rather to try and convince more patients to choose to be discharged.
In a sense, it represents offering patients a menu of options where overtreatment is one of them. If a dyspneic patient meets PERC, we don’t offer them a visual aid where a CTPA is an option – and that shouldn’t be our expectation here, either. These authors have put in tremendous effort over many years to integrate many important tools, but it feels like the end result is a demonstration of a shared decision-making instrument intended to nudge patients into choosing the disposition we think they ought, but are somehow afraid to outright tell them.
“Shared decision making in patients with low risk chest pain: prospective randomized pragmatic trial”
http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6165.short