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Optimal Heart Team Protocol to Improve Revascularization Decisions in Patients with Complex Coronary Artery Disease:
Hanping Ma1, Shen Lin1,2, Xi Li1
1National Clinical Research Center of Cardiovascular Diseases, State Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Disease, Fuwai Hospital, National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Insights
Heart team agreement for complex coronary artery disease revascularization decisions was moderate. Factors influencing discrepancies were identified, leading to a proposed heart team protocol to improve decision-making stability.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Health Services Research
Background:
- Current guidelines advocate for heart teams in complex coronary artery disease (CAD) decision-making.
- The stability and optimal protocol for these heart teams remain unevaluated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess inter-team agreement in revascularization decisions for complex CAD patients.
- To identify factors influencing decision-making discrepancies within heart teams.
- To inform the development of a standardized heart team protocol.
Main Methods:
- A sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study.
- Quantitative phase: Assessed inter-team agreement using kappa statistic for 101 complex CAD patients across 4 heart teams (16 specialists).
- Qualitative phase: Semi-structured interviews with heart team members to explore decision-making influences.
Main Results:
- Moderate inter-team agreement for revascularization decisions (kappa = 0.58).
- Key influencing factors identified: specialist quality, team composition, and meeting process.
- Generated recommendations for heart team implementation across five levels.
Conclusions:
- Heart team agreement in complex CAD revascularization is moderate, highlighting variability.
- A novel, detailed heart team protocol was developed based on identified influencing factors.
- Further validation of the proposed protocol is recommended for clinical deployment.
Aims:
Current guidelines recommend a heart team in the decision-making for patients with complex coronary artery disease (CAD). However, the decision-making stability of these teams has not been evaluated and the optimum protocol is unknown. We assessed inter-team agreement for revascularization decision-making and influencing factors to inform the development of a heart team protocol.
Methods And Results:
This sequential, explanatory mixed methods study included (i) a cross-sectional quantitative study to assess inter-team agreement on treatment strategy for retrospectively enrolled complex CAD patients and (ii) a qualitative study that used semi-structured interviews with heart team members to identify factors influencing decision-making discrepancy. We randomly selected 101 complex CAD patients. Sixteen specialists were randomly assigned to four heart teams to make decisions for these patients. The primary outcome kappa of inter-team decision-making agreement was moderate (kappa 0.58). Factors influencing decision-making were generated through inductive thematic analysis and were summarized by 3 themes (specialist quality, team composition, and meeting process) and 10 subthemes. Recommendations of heart team implementation were generated based on qualitative and quantitative data at five levels: specialist selection, specialist training, team composition, team training, and meeting process. A detailed protocol on the integration of guidelines, previous experience, and recommendations was generated to establish and deploy a qualified heart team.
Conclusion:
Agreement between heart teams for revascularization decision-making in complex CAD patients was moderate. Potential factors associated with decision discrepancies were summarized and recommendations were generated. A detailed heart team protocol was designed and should be validated in future.
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