Cardiac Transplant DisorderNCT04133831
Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Layperson Study 1
A study testing Total Survival and Stratified Transplant Survival in people with Cardiac Transplant Disorder, run by Carnegie Mellon University at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. 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?
- Total Survival and Stratified Transplant Survival
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 1,019 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 15 Nov 2019to 30 Apr 2020
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- Yes, posted in the registrySummary in the doctors' view
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 who are already qualified mTurk workers with Worker Accounts meeting the above criteria 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 live in United States
Who cannot join
- Participants on mTurk will not be allowed to participate if they fail to pass the initial "bot screening", a multiple-choice question that asks, "What phone number should you dial when there is an emergency?" The obvious correct response in this screening question is "911", so participants who select one of the incorrect responses (i.e. "1-800-ANTIBOT", "1-877-MTURKER", "123") are filtered out and not allowed to complete the survey.
- Participants on mTurk will be allowed to participate, but excluded from data analysis, if they submit a nonsense response to the free-response question which reads, "In your own words, why do you think patients should choose the hospital you picked?" This question takes place after the participant has viewed the choice stimuli and selected their response. If participants input nonsense in the text response box, they will be permitted to complete the survey and paid, but filtered out from the data analysis.
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country.
United States1 site
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15213
About this study
Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions. Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality).
Read the detailed description
Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions:
- Condition 1 ("baseline" condition): view only combined transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center)
- Condition 2: view combined transplant survival + total survival (e.g. overall survival rate at each center, computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients)
- Condition 3: view only stratified transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate stratified into patients who received excellent donor organs and patients who received less than optimal donor organs)
- Condition 4: view stratified transplant survival + total survival
- Condition 5: view only total survival
Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality). In order to identify the decision process that underlies this choice pattern, the investigators will examine a putative mediator. Specifically, participants will be asked to rate the extent to which they considered patients' chances of getting an excellent heart, avoiding a less-than-optimal heart, and getting any type of heart when making their choice between the two hospitals.
- Conditions
- Cardiac Transplant Disorder
- Being tested
- Total Survival, Stratified Transplant Survival
- Keywords
- Heart Transplant, Transplant Survival, Applied Ethics, Decision Psychology, Human Behavior
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Total SurvivalOther
The overall or "total" survival rate at each center is displayed in the table of outcome statistics.
Total survival is computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients: [(number of patients surviving after transplant at end of year + number of patients alive on waitlist at end of year)] / [number of patients alive on waitlist at start of year].
Stratified Transplant SurvivalOther
The transplant survival rate in the table of outcome statistics is stratified into two groups: (i) patients who received excellent donor organs and (ii) patients who received less than optimal donor organs.
Stratified transplant survival is computed from survival rates of transplant patients who received each quality category of organ.
excellent transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with excellent organ]/[number of patients for whom excellent organ was accepted for transplant] marginal transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ]/[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant]
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Condition 1: Combined only | 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. |
| Condition 2: Combined plus Total | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 2 will view combined transplant survival and total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. Receives: Other: Total Survival |
| Condition 3: Stratified only | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 3 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. Receives: Other: Stratified Transplant Survival |
| Condition 4: Stratified plus Total | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 4 will view stratified transplant survival and total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. Receives: Other: Total Survival; Other: Stratified Transplant Survival |
| Condition 5: Total only | Experimental | Participants randomized to Condition 5 will view only total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. Receives: Other: Total Survival |
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 a better choice for patients? 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)
Mediator of Hospital 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). Patients were more likely to receive any type of donor heart at the hospital I picked.
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 posted21 Oct 2019
- Study start15 Nov 2019
- Primary completion30 Apr 2020
- Study completion30 Apr 2020
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
- Factorial
- Masking
- Single blind
- Who is masked
- Participant
- Enrolment
- 1,019 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
- Investigators
- Alison E Butler, BS, Principal investigator, Carnegie Mellon University
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT04133831
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 1 F30 HL152526-01-A
- Other IDs
- 20PRE35120492, 1F30HL152526-01
- Status last verified
- Apr 2026
- First submitted
- 18 Oct 2019
- Last updated
- 23 Apr 2026
- Results posted
- Yes, on ClinicalTrials.gov
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- 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.
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 23 Apr 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Layperson Study 1
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT04133831
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- 1 F30 HL152526-01-A
- Conditions
- Cardiac Transplant Disorder
- Keywords
- Heart Transplant, Transplant Survival, Applied Ethics, Decision Psychology, Human Behavior
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Enrolment
- 1,019 participants (actual)
- Lead sponsor
- Carnegie Mellon UniversityUniversity, hospital or other
- Study start
- 15 Nov 2019 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 30 Apr 2020 (actual)
- Study completion
- 30 Apr 2020 (actual)
- First posted
- 21 Oct 2019 (actual)
- Results
- Posted 29 Oct 2024
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions. Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality).
Detailed description
Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions:
- Condition 1 ("baseline" condition): view only combined transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center)
- Condition 2: view combined transplant survival + total survival (e.g. overall survival rate at each center, computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients)
- Condition 3: view only stratified transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate stratified into patients who received excellent donor organs and patients who received less than optimal donor organs)
- Condition 4: view stratified transplant survival + total survival
- Condition 5: view only total survival
Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality). In order to identify the decision process that underlies this choice pattern, the investigators will examine a putative mediator. Specifically, participants will be asked to rate the extent to which they considered patients' chances of getting an excellent heart, avoiding a less-than-optimal heart, and getting any type of heart when making their choice between the two hospitals.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Health services research
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Factorial
- Masking
- Single blind (participant)
- Number of arms
- 5
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Condition 1: Combined only | 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. |
| Condition 2: Combined plus Total | Experimental | Other: Total SurvivalParticipants randomized to Condition 2 will view combined transplant survival and total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. |
| Condition 3: Stratified only | Experimental | Other: Stratified Transplant SurvivalParticipants randomized to Condition 3 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. |
| Condition 4: Stratified plus Total | Experimental | Other: Total Survival, Other: Stratified Transplant SurvivalParticipants randomized to Condition 4 will view stratified transplant survival and total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. |
| Condition 5: Total only | Experimental | Other: Total SurvivalParticipants randomized to Condition 5 will view only total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 18 years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Adult, Older adult
Key inclusion criteria (5 listed)
- Participants who are already qualified mTurk workers with Worker Accounts meeting the above criteria 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 live in United States
Key exclusion criteria (2 listed)
- Participants on mTurk will not be allowed to participate if they fail to pass the initial "bot screening", a multiple-choice question that asks, "What phone number should you dial when there is an emergency?" The obvious correct response in this screening question is "911", so participants who select one of the incorrect responses (i.e. "1-800-ANTIBOT", "1-877-MTURKER", "123") are filtered out and not allowed to complete the survey.
- Participants on mTurk will be allowed to participate, but excluded from data analysis, if they submit a nonsense response to the free-response question which reads, "In your own words, why do you think patients should choose the hospital you picked?" This question takes place after the participant has viewed the choice stimuli and selected their response. If participants input nonsense in the text response box, they will be permitted to complete the survey and paid, but filtered out from the data analysis.
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Total SurvivalThe overall or "total" survival rate at each center is displayed in the table of outcome statistics. Total survival is computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients: [(number of patients surviving after transplant at end of year + number of patients alive on waitlist at end of year)] / [number of patients alive on waitlist at start of year]. | Other | Condition 2: Combined plus Total, Condition 4: Stratified plus Total, Condition 5: Total only |
| Stratified Transplant SurvivalThe transplant survival rate in the table of outcome statistics is stratified into two groups: (i) patients who received excellent donor organs and (ii) patients who received less than optimal donor organs. Stratified transplant survival is computed from survival rates of transplant patients who received each quality category of organ. excellent transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with excellent organ]/[number of patients for whom excellent organ was accepted for transplant] marginal transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ]/[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant] | Other | Condition 3: Stratified only, Condition 4: Stratified plus Total |
Primary outcome
Hospital Choice
Time frame: 1 day
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 a better choice for patients? 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.
1 secondary outcome
Mediator of Hospital Choice
Time frame: 1 day
Results and safety
Loading the posted results from ClinicalTrials.gov…
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 23 Apr 2026.
- Posted resultsParticipant flow, baseline, all outcome measures and adverse events.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: 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.
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part. This study is not recruiting at the moment.
Alison E Butler, BS principal investigator
Carnegie Mellon University
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Total Survival and Stratified Transplant Survival in people with Cardiac Transplant Disorder, run by Carnegie Mellon University at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 5 inclusion and 2 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 23 Apr 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
Yes. Results are posted in the registry (first posted 29 Oct 2024). A summary is in the For doctors view, and the full results are on ClinicalTrials.gov.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Hospital Choice (time frame: 1 day). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 23 Apr 2026.