NCT04133831

Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Layperson Study 1

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 1,019 (actual)
• Sponsor: Carnegie Mellon University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions. Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality).

Detailed description

Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions: 1. Condition 1 ("baseline" condition): view only combined transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) 2. Condition 2: view combined transplant survival + total survival (e.g. overall survival rate at each center, computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients) 3. Condition 3: view only stratified transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate stratified into patients who received excellent donor organs and patients who received less than optimal donor organs) 4. Condition 4: view stratified transplant survival + total survival 5. Condition 5: view only total survival Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality). In order to identify the decision process that underlies this choice pattern, the investigators will examine a putative mediator. Specifically, participants will be asked to rate the extent to which they considered patients' chances of getting an excellent heart, avoiding a less-than-optimal heart, and getting any type of heart when making their choice between the two hospitals.

Conditions

• Cardiac Transplant Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Total Survival	The overall or "total" survival rate at each center is displayed in the table of outcome statistics. Total survival is computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients: \[(number of patients surviving after transplant at end of year + number of patients alive on waitlist at end of year)\] / \[number of patients alive on waitlist at start of year\].
OTHER	Stratified Transplant Survival	The transplant survival rate in the table of outcome statistics is stratified into two groups: (i) patients who received excellent donor organs and (ii) patients who received less than optimal donor organs. Stratified transplant survival is computed from survival rates of transplant patients who received each quality category of organ. excellent transplant survival = \[number of patients surviving after transplant with excellent organ\]/\[number of patients for whom excellent organ was accepted for transplant\] marginal transplant survival = \[number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ\]/\[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant\]

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-11-15
• Primary completion: 2020-04-30
• Completion: 2020-04-30
• First posted: 2019-10-21
• Last updated: 2024-10-29
• Results posted: 2024-10-29

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States