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

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 subjects had randomly received a hypothetical scenario regarding a relative intubated with severe acute brain injury with a prognosis of severe disability but with the potential to regain some consciousness. Seven hundred and ninety-six subjects had been randomized to a similar scenario in which the relative was projected to remain vegetative. For each scenario, we conducted univariate analyses and binary logistic regressions to determine predictors of LST selection among available respondent characteristics. RESULTS: 15.0% of subjects selected LST for the severe disability scenario compared to 11.4% for the vegetative state scenario (p = 0.07), with those selecting LST in both groups expressing less decisional certainty. For the severe disability scenario, independent predictors of LST included having less than a high school education (adjusted OR = 2.87, 95% CI = 1.23-6.76), concern regarding prognostic accuracy (7.64, 3.61-16.15), and concern regarding the cost of care (4.07, 1.80-9.18). For the vegetative scenario, predictors included the youngest age group (30-44 years, 3.33, 1.02-10.86), male gender (3.26, 1.75-6.06), English as a second language (2.94, 1.09-7.89), Evangelical Protestant (3.72, 1.28-10.84) and Catholic (4.01, 1.72-9.36) affiliations, and low income (< $25 K). CONCLUSION: Several demographic and decisional characteristics of US surrogate decision makers predict LST selection for patients with severe brain injury with varying degrees of poor prognosis. Surrogates concerned about the cost of medical care may nevertheless be inclined to select LST, albeit with high levels of decisional uncertainty, for patients projected to have severe disabilities.

Concerns of surrogate decision makers for patients with acute brain injury: A US population survey.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether groups of surrogates for patients with severe acute brain injury (SABI) with poor prognosis can be identified based on their prioritization of goals-of-care (GOC) decisional concerns, an online survey of 1,588 adults recruited via a probability-based panel representative of the US population was conducted. METHODS: Participants acted as a surrogate for a GOC decision for a hypothetical patient with SABI and were randomized to 1 of 2 prognostic scenarios: the patient likely being left with a range of severe functional disability (SD) or remaining in a vegetative state (VS). Participants prioritized a list of 12 decisional concerns via best-worst scaling. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to discover decisional groups. RESULTS: The completion rate was 44.6%; data weighting was conducted to mitigate nonresponse bias. For 792 SD respondents, LCA revealed 4 groups. All groups shared concerns regarding respecting patient wishes and minimizing suffering. The 4 groups were otherwise distinguished by unique concerns that their members highlighted: an older adult remaining severely disabled (34.4%), family consensus (26.4%), doubt regarding prognostic accuracy (20.7%), and cost of long-term care (18.6%). For the 796 VS respondents, LCA revealed 5 groups. Four of the 5 groups had similar concern profiles to the 4 SD groups. The largest (29.0%) expressed the most prognostic doubt. An additional group (15.8%) prioritized religious concerns. CONCLUSIONS: Although surrogate decision makers for patients with SABI are concerned with respecting patient wishes and minimizing suffering, certain groups highly prioritize other specific decisional factors. These data can help inform future interventions for supporting decision makers.