Decision Aid for Therapeutic Options In Sickle Cell Disease

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited disorder with chronic multi-system manifestations affecting 100,000 individuals in the US, largely of minority origin and associated with substantial morbidity, premature mortality, individual suffering, healthcare costs and loss of productivity. Disease modifying treatments such as hydroxyurea, chronic blood transfusion and curative bone marrow transplantation are offered to patients based on physician preference and current practice informed by clinical trials. Decision aids are tools that could help translate evidence from these sources into practice by helping clinicians involve patients in making deliberate choices based on accessible information about the options available and their outcomes and to help them make decisions based on their values and preferences. The overarching goal of this project is to implement a web based decision aid individualized to patient characteristics to help patients with SCD achieve more accurate perception of risks and benefits of treatment options and make decisions in congruence with their values and preferences. Investigators will use a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of a web-based decision aid to give patients accurate information about risks and benefits of therapies that enable patients to make decisions based on their individual values and preferences.