Cardiac Transplant DisorderNCT04809051
Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Patient Study 4
A study testing Stratified Transplant Survival Metric and SRTR Information Format in people with Cardiac Transplant Disorder, run by Carnegie Mellon University at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
This empirical study tests whether transplant center performance data that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence patients and their family members to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 years and olderHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Cardiac Transplant Disorder
- What is being tested?
- Stratified Transplant Survival Metric and SRTR Information Format
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 71 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 1 Apr 2021to 31 Aug 2023
- Phase
- Interventional
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 years and older
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult, Older adult
Who may be able to join
- Participants will be asked to participate if they confirm the following inclusion criteria in the consent form.
- 18 years of age or older
- must read and understand the information in the consent form
- must want to participate in the research and continue with the survey
- must be a pre- or post-transplant patient or family member of the transplant patient
Who cannot join
- Participants who do not meet the primary criterion of being a pre- or post-transplant patient or family member of the transplant patient.
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country.
United States1 site
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15213
About this study
This empirical study tests whether transplant center performance data that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence patients and their family members to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 400 transplant patients and family members will be recruited from transplant support group social media websites and randomized to one of four different information presentation conditions. Upon viewing a pair of outcome tables corresponding to their condition, the participants are asked to choose which hospital is higher performing (one hospital with a non-selective "accepting" strategy and one hospital with a more selective "cherrypicking" strategy.
- Conditions
- Cardiac Transplant Disorder
- Being tested
- Stratified Transplant Survival Metric, SRTR Information Format
- Keywords
- Heart Transplant, Transplant Survival, Applied Ethics, Medical Student, Human Behavior, Decision Psychology
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Stratified Transplant Survival MetricOther
Both transplant metric conditions display the number of hearts offered to each center, the number of hearts accepted by each center, and the number of transplants performed at each center (in a year), in addition to the condition-specific metrics below. The stratified condition instead features a pair of values corresponding to each center's offers/acceptances/transplant survival rates for donor hearts of "optimal" or "adequate" quality.
SRTR Information FormatOther
The information format varies based on how the transplant hospital statistics are organized when presented to participants on the choice screen. The SRTR conditions mimic the information format present on the SRTR public reporting website.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Condition 1: Combined Transplant Pictograph | No intervention | Participants randomized to baseline (control) arm Condition 1 will view only combined transplant survival outcome information (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a survival rate pictograph corresponding to all patients at the center who received transplants. |
| Condition 2: Stratified Transplant Pictograph | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 2 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a pair of survival rate pictographs corresponding to two distinct groups of transplant patients at the center: those who received optimal donor organs and those who received adequate donor organs. Receives: Other: Stratified Transplant Survival Metric |
| Condition 3: Combined Transplant SRTR | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 3 will view only combined transplant survival outcome information (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a quintile score corresponding to all patients at the center who received transplants. Receives: Other: SRTR Information Format |
| Condition 4: Stratified Transplant SRTR | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 4 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a pair of quintile scores corresponding to two distinct groups of transplant patients at the center: those who received optimal donor organs and those who received adequate donor organs. Receives: Other: Stratified Transplant Survival Metric; Other: SRTR Information Format |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Hospital Choice
The outcome variable will be a measure of binary choice between two hospitals: one with a selective donor-heart acceptance strategy and one with a non-selective donor heart acceptance strategy.
Participants will respond to the question "Which Hospital is higher performing? Please click on one of the two tables below to indicate which hospital is the better choice." Participants will choose been two outcome tables featuring the selective and non-selective hospital (counterbalanced, such that each of the two choices is equally likely to be presented at top of the choice scenario in each condition). The number of participants that choose each hospital will be the measured outcome variable used in analyses.
Measured: 1 day
Secondary outcomes (1)
Participant Ratings of Reasons for Choice
Participants responded to the question: "There are many reasons why one transplant hospital might outperform another. Which reasons were most important in your decision? Please move the slider to indicate how much you considered each of the reasons below (0=reason was not important, 100=reason was extremely important). [reason 1:] Patients were more likely to receive any type of donor heart at the hospital I picked."
Reported below are the mean ratings for how important the likelihood of receiving any kind of heart was in the participant's choice of a hospital. Scores are reported on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0=reason was not important and 100=reason was extremely important
Measured: 1 day
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted22 Mar 2021
- Study start1 Apr 2021
- Primary completion31 Aug 2023
- Study completion31 Aug 2023
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Posted resultsParticipant flow, outcome measures and adverse events reported by the sponsor.
- Other trials for Cardiac Transplant DisorderStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Health services research
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Single blind
- Who is masked
- Participant
- Enrolment
- 71 participants (actual)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Responsible party
- Principal investigator, Gretchen Chapman, Carnegie Mellon University
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT04809051
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 1 F30 HL152526-01-D
- Other IDs
- 1F30HL152526-01
- Status last verified
- Jul 2026
- First submitted
- 18 Mar 2021
- Last updated
- 23 Oct 2026
- Results posted
- Yes, on ClinicalTrials.gov
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- Yes: Yes The PI will make all of the raw IPD files - together with statistical analysis protocol descriptions and information for proper analysis available for download a minimum of 1 year, and a maximum of 3 years, after publication of the corresponding manuscripts. All human subjects data are anonymized immediately when they are initially written from the online survey platform to the server, and thus participant confidentiality will not be compromised by this plan for data sharing. All hypotheses, methods, and planned analyses for the applicant's studies will be pre-registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and Open Science Framework.