Introduction: We aimed to understand clinician views regarding gene therapy as a future treatment for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and potential barriers and facilitators to its use.
Methods: We interviewed ten clinicians who treat patients with AD. Clinicians helped design a semi-structured interview including the following domains: establishing understanding, cost/access, quality of life, and religion/spirituality. Transcripts were analyzed by a coding team using descriptive content analysis with inductive approach.
Results: Clinicians identified three main areas of concern: 1) potential clinician and patient understanding of gene therapy and Alzheimer's disease 2) consideration of inequity (i.e., care access, disease awareness along with education level, family support, trust in care systems); and 3) considerations in decision-making (i.e., religious/spiritual beliefs and method of treatment delivery as a decision-making tools).
Discussion and conclusion: Findings highlight areas for knowledge-building for patients and clinicians alike. Clinicians must be aware of patient/family educational needs and gaps in their own clinical knowledge before engaging patients/families with new technology. Allowing time for questions is crucial to building rapport and trust.
Copyright: © 2024 Kelemen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.