Predictors of Surrogate Decision Makers Selecting Life-Sustaining Therapy for Severe Acute Brain Injury Patients: An Analysis of US Population Survey Data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Patients with a severe acute brain injury admitted to the intensive care unit often have a poor neurological prognosis. In these situations, a clinician is responsible for conducting a goals-of-care conversation with the patient's surrogate decision makers. The diversity in thought and background of surrogate decision makers can present challenges during these conversations. For this reason, our study aimed to identify predictive characteristics of US surrogate decision makers' favoring life-sustaining treatment (LST) over comfort measures only for patients with severe acute brain injury.

Methods

We analyzed data from a cross-sectional survey study that had recruited 1588 subjects from an online probability-based US population sample. Seven hundred and ninety-two

SUBMITTER: Garg A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8380750 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature