Identifying women's preferences for treatment of urinary tract infection: a discrete choice experiment

To identify the preferences of women regarding management of urinary tract infections (UTIs).

A discrete choice experiment of the preferences for certain treatment attributes was conducted by survey. Attributes included treatment duration, time to complaint resolution, complication risk, side effect risk and contribution to antimicrobial resistance.

General population in the Netherlands, recruited via social media.

Women aged 18 years or older.

The primary outcome was the relative importance of the attributes for treatment choice, using a conditional logit model. The secondary outcome was the heterogeneity in these preferences.

The discrete choice experiment was completed by 833 women. Most attributes were important to decisions for UTI treatment. Women were willing to accept management with, for example, a higher chance of complications or longer time to resolution, if it could help avoid antimicrobial resistance. However, there was heterogeneity in the preferences. Women who had one previous UTI had a stronger preference for faster symptom resolution compared with those who had no previous UTI. Younger women also preferred faster symptom resolution. Finally, women with a low or middle education level gave less importance to preventing antimicrobial resistance than women with a high education level.

The current study indicated that a considerable part of women valued alternatives to antimicrobial treatment and were prepared to tolerate management that was less optimal in certain respects to avoid antimicrobial treatment.