• Keren Ladin, Hocine Tighiouart, Olivia Bronzi, Susan Koch-Weser, John B Wong, Sarah Levine, Arushi Agarwal, Lucy Ren, Jack Degnan, Lexi N Sewall, Brianna Kuramitsu, Patrick Fox, Elisa J Gordon, Tamara Isakova, Dena Rifkin, Ana Rossi, and Daniel E Weiner.
• Research on Ethics, Aging, and Community Health (REACH Lab), Medford, and Departments of Community Health and Occupational Therapy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts (K.L.).
• Ann. Intern. Med. 2023 Jan 1; 176 (1): 293829-38.

BackgroundOlder patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) face difficult decisions about managing kidney failure, frequently experiencing decisional conflict, regret, and treatment misaligned with preferences.ObjectiveTo assess whether a decision aid about kidney replacement therapy improved decisional quality compared with usual care.DesignMulticenter, randomized, controlled trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03522740).Setting8 outpatient nephrology clinics associated with 4 U.S. centers.ParticipantsEnglish-fluent patients, 70 years and older with nondialysis CKD stages 4 to 5 recruited from 2018 to 2020.InterventionDART (Decision-Aid for Renal Therapy) is an interactive, web-based decision aid for older adults with CKD. Both groups received written education about treatments.MeasurementsChange in the decisional conflict scale (DCS) score from baseline to 3, 6, 12, and 18 months. Secondary outcomes included change in prognostic and treatment knowledge and change in uncertainty.ResultsAmong 400 participants, 363 were randomly assigned: 180 to usual care, 183 to DART. Decisional quality improved with DART with mean DCS declining compared with control (mean difference, -8.5 [95% CI, -12.0 to -5.0]; P < 0.001), with similar findings at 6 months, attenuating thereafter. At 3 months, knowledge improved with DART versus usual care (mean difference, 7.2 [CI, 3.7 to 10.7]; P < 0.001); similar findings at 6 months were modestly attenuated at 18 months (mean difference, 5.9 [CI, 1.4 to 10.3]; P = 0.010). Treatment preferences changed from 58% "unsure" at baseline to 28%, 20%, 23%, and 14% at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months, respectively, with DART, versus 51% to 38%, 35%, 32%, and 18% with usual care.LimitationLatinx patients were underrepresented.ConclusionDART improved decision quality and clarified treatment preferences among older adults with advanced CKD for 6 months after the DART intervention.Primary Funding SourcePatient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

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