A cross-sectional questionnaire assessing patient and physician use of short-term prophylaxis for hereditary angioedema.

Background: Current guidelines recommend short-term prophylaxis (STP) before invasive procedures to prevent hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks; however, adherence to these guidelines may be variable because this indication lacks Food and Drug Administration approval in the United States.

Objective: To ascertain the STP experiences of patients with HAE and HAE-treating physicians.

Methods: Online questionnaires focusing on STP experiences were distributed by the US Hereditary Angioedema Association to the first 250 patients with HAE and to registered HAE-treating physicians. SAS 9.3 was used to perform descriptive statistics and to test the difference between patients who underwent procedures and those who did not using Pearson χ(2) test, Fisher exact test, and 2-sample t test.

Results: For the patient survey, 219 respondents met the criteria for HAE type 1 and 2; 37 (17%) underwent 66 invasive procedures, and all reported receiving STP. Eight patients (22%) reported failed STP, but only 3 required on-demand therapy. For STP, anabolic steroids and plasma-derived C1 inhibitor were the most and second-most commonly used, respectively. For the physician survey, 37 physicians reported caring for 433 patients with HAE. Depending on the procedure, 19% to 54% of physicians used STP and 30% to 86% prescribed on-demand therapy; 69% and 78% of physicians prescribed plasma-derived C1 inhibitor as STP for minimally invasive and invasive procedures, respectively. Physicians reported excellent efficacy for the STP treatments used.

Conclusion: Physicians reported excellent outcomes using primarily newer STP therapies, namely plasma-derived C1 inhibitor, which was discordant to patient-reported outcomes using older STP therapies, namely anabolic steroids. Well-controlled STP studies are needed to clarify use for patients with HAE in the United States.