OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of age on hospital resource use for seriously ill adults, and to explore whether age-related differences in resource use are explained by patients' severity of illness and preferences for ...

BACKGROUND: Serious illness often causes economic hardship for patients' families. However, it is not known whether this hardship is associated with a preference for the goal of care to focus on maximizing comfort instead ...

BACKGROUND: Medical treatment decisions should be based on the preferences of informed patients or their proxies and on the expected outcomes of treatment. Because seriously ill patients are at risk for cardiac arrest, examination ...

CONTEXT: Previous studies have documented that cancer patients tend to overestimate the probability of long-term survival. If patient preferences about the trade-offs between the risks and benefits associated with alternative ...

OBJECTIVES: To describe functional outcomes of seriously III patients who survived 2 months after in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and to identify patient and clinical characteristics associated with ...

BACKGROUND: During serious illness, patient preferences regarding life-sustaining treatments play an important role in medical decisions. However, little is known about life-sustaining preference stability in this population ...

BACKGROUND: Physicians are frequently unaware of patient preferences for end-of-life care. Identifying and exploring barriers to patient-physician communication about end-of-life issues may help guide physicians and ...

BACKGROUND: Renal failure requiring dialysis in the setting of hospitalization for serious illness is a poor prognostic sign, and dialysis and aggressive care are sometimes withheld. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical ...