Physician Recommendations to Limit Life Support — What Do Surrogates Want?

Do surrogate decision-makers for critically ill patients want physicians to make recommendations about limiting life support? To answer this question, San Francisco researchers recruited 169 surrogate decision-makers for critically ill intensive care unit patients to watch a video that addressed this issue.

In the video, a physician discusses a critically ill patient's prognosis and treatment options with a daughter (her 72-year-old father has been in the ICU for 3 weeks with respiratory failure, renal failure, and stroke; his probability of dying in the hospital is estimated to be 90%; if he survives, he will not regain independence; he had told the daughter previously that he wouldn't want this kind of life). Next, two endings were shown. …