Prioritising patient-centred care in the management of chronic urticaria in Asia-Pacific countries.

Background: Chronic urticaria (CU), in both inducible and spontaneous forms, is associated with a substantial burden in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC). Patient-centred care recognises patients desire to be involved in decisions regarding their health. Although patient-centred approaches have previously not been studied in the context of CU management, they have demonstrated benefits in the management of other chronic conditions.
Methods: Information and opinions regarding the barriers and solutions to the implementation of patient-centred approaches to the management of CU were gathered from a group of 13 expert dermatologists and allergist/immunologists from APAC through surveys and a face-to-face meeting.
Results: Barriers identified there included a lack of awareness of CU amongst patients, delays in consulting healthcare providers, financial constraints, and low adherence. Particular issues raised included a lack of suitable online information for patients (83% of experts), and patients accessing oral corticosteroids without a prescription. Compliance issues were also identified as key reasons for inadequate responses to treatments (67% of experts). Solutions proposed by the authors were improving patients' knowledge about their condition (92% strongly agree, 8% agree), physicians' consideration of patient characteristics when choosing treatments (92% strongly agree, 8% agree), implementing shared decision-making (85% strongly agree, 15% agree), and using patient-reported outcome measures (70% strongly agree, 23% agree).
Conclusion: Expert opinion within APAC supports the use of patient-centred approaches to improve the management of CU. We provide several recommendations focusing on patient education and involvement in disease management as well as disease monitoring methods that can be implemented by physicians in APAC.
Competing Interests: The authors received honoraria and support from A. Menarini Asia Pacific Pte Ltd for transportation and accommodation for the STAR Network meeting. A. Menarini also provided support staff at the meeting and funded medical writing support from Clarivate for the development of the manuscript. MTR also reports the following outside of the submitted work: payments or honoraria from A. Menarini to act as an advisory board member; payments or honoraria from Bayer and Cathay Drug to act as a speaker; and support from A. Menarini, Cathay Drug, and United Laboratories Philippines to attend meetings and international allergy conferences. KW also reports the following outside of the submitted work: payments/honoraria and support for attending meetings from A. Menarini. KK also reports the following outside of the submitted work: payments or honoraria for speaking/presenting from A. Menarini, Novartis, and Sandoz; and support for attending meetings from A. Menarini. ML also reports the following outside of the submitted work: honoraria for educational lectures from GSK, AstraZeneca, A. Menarini, Sanofi, and Takeda. DN works with A. Menarini Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. and was involved in facilitating the expert meeting. The remaining authors report no additional disclosures outside of the submitted work.
(© 2024 The Authors.)