Our patients are dying

Abstract

The rapid aging of our population has led to a growing proportion of elderly patients and those presenting with severe neurologic injury in the hospital. Because these patients frequently lack capacity, surrogate decision makers often shoulder the burden of having to decide between continued aggressive care vs withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies. There are scant data to guide the decision-making process in this increasingly common scenario. In this issue of Neurology (R), Hwang et al.(1) report a study aimed at identifying the most common concerns for surrogate decision makers when faced with the hypothetical situation of determining a plan of care for a neurologically devastated patient.