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Decision aids can improve the quality of various patient decisions in the outpatient setting, but they have not been studied in acute care settings. Investigators designed a personalized and interactive internet-based decision aid that included a model-estimated prognosis tool and a goals-of-care decision-making tool for surrogates of patients in intensive care units who were facing prolonged mechanical ventilation (≥10 days). The researchers randomized 277 patients (who lacked decision-making capacity) and 416 of their surrogates to receive either the interactive decision aid followed by a family meeting with nurses and physicians or a family meeting alone. Six-month survival among patients was ≈60%.
The decision aid did not increase progno…