#044: Shared Decision Making (SDM) for Treatment Success in MS. Interview with Prof. Christoph Heesen

Prof. C. Heesen explains what it needs to have shared decision making in MS and where there are the pros and cons, options and limitations.

You can find the transcript of the interview on my blog to read it: https://ms-perspektive.com/044-shared-decision-making

Today's interview is about the topic of shared decision making in the treatment of MS. What requirements must be met to enable shared decision making? How intensively is it already being practiced? What are the advantages and disadvantages of patients deciding together with their neurologist how their personal MS should be treated? I talk about this with Prof. Christoph Heesen, who is passionate about this topic and has already developed a number of information services for the German-speaking patient community to enable patients to make informed decisions.

Introduction – Who is Prof. Dr. Christoph Heesen?

Prof. Christoph Heesen is a Senior physician, Head of the MS-Center and Neurologist at the Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg in Germany. He was already couple of times my guest for the German MS-Perspektive podcast. We talked about stem cell therapy and for whom this treatment is a good option. Another interview concentrated on German patient information tools, established by his team that help to provide patients with information around treatment choices. The platforms include statements from patients that are positive, neutral and negative on certain options to make it balanced.

How and where can interested people find more information on shared decision making in MS or even more generic in medical treatment?

Prof. Christoph Heesen: We have the International Society of Shared Decision-Making. She has a website and a conference every two years, I think. The next will be in Switzerland, if I'm informed right. In terms of disease specific, it depends a lot from of course, a given country and the language. To be honest, I'm not aware that on international grounds, there's really a shared decision making portal for MS patients, who is really working with this concept.

Of course, we have more or less advanced websites, for example, from the UK MS Society, which in general, a lot has this attitude that patients need to make their choices and how to inform patients about that. But with this very shared decision making, a focused approach, this is, it's not really very prevalent. It's maybe sold in a different way and I think the overall attitude in MS centers in larger, at least Western world MS centers is in this direction, but it's not shouted out in this way. So I must confess I'm not really able to provide this. As an international crowd in Germany, we have a couple of tools which you can use. We put most of them of ours in the back, but I'm sorry most of them are…

Nele Handwerker: German only. Yes, but I think it's also worth checking the European MS Society and the International MS Society. At least they try to take their part on patient education and that is, as we defined, of course, one basis for shared decision making. Fantastic. Christoph, thanks a lot. It was a pleasure to talk in English to you, next time in Germany again, I guess. And I hope you out there have now a better understanding and know what is possible, but where also, let's say, yeah, the advantages, the disadvantages, and maybe what's possible, what's not possible. And yeah, thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

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See you soon and try to make the best out of your life,
Nele

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