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About 37 million Americans live with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and may not know about their options for treatment or the benefits and harms of each choice.

A PCORI-funded research study that compared two ways to help older adults with advanced CKD and their care partners learn about and decide on a treatment found that an online decision aid about kidney replacement therapy helped patients improve decision quality and clarify treatment preferences, according to results appearing in Annals of Internal Medicine.^

For the study, the research team, led by Keren Ladin, PhD, MS, and Daniel E. Weiner, MD, MS, at Tufts University, followed 363 patients aged 70 years and older with advanced CKD across eight research sites. One group received the usual care, which included CKD education from a doctor plus a booklet on CKD treatment, while a second group received the usual care and access to the online interactive decision aid called Decision Aid for Renal Therapy, or DART.

Patients in the second group showed that their knowledge about decision making and the treatment preferences significantly improved at three months and at six months, with smaller improvements observed through a period of 18 months.

 


Posted: January 9, 2023

^ © 2022 American College of Physicians. Used with permission. Access to this article is for personal reading only, and unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this article is prohibited.

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