• Fur-Hsing Wen, Jen-Shi Chen, Wen-Chi Chou, Wen-Cheng Chang, Chia-Hsun Hsieh, and Siew Tzuh Tang.
• Department of International Business, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2019 Jul 1; 58 (1): 1-10.e10.

ContextPromoting patient value-concordant end-of-life care is a priority in health care systems but has rarely been examined in randomized clinical trials.ObjectivesTo examine the effectiveness of an advance care planning intervention in facilitating concordance between cancer patients' preferred and received life-sustaining treatment (LST) states and to explore modifiable factors facilitating or impeding such concordance.MethodsTerminal cancer patients (N = 460) were randomly assigned 1:1 to the experimental and control arms of a randomized clinical trial, with 430 deceased participants comprising the final sample. States of preferred LSTs (cardiopulmonary resuscitation, intensive care unit care, chest compression, intubation with mechanical ventilation, intravenous nutrition, and nasogastric tube feeding) and LSTs received in the last month were examined by hidden Markov modeling. Concordance and its modifiable predictors were evaluated by kappa and multivariate logistic regression, respectively.ResultsWe identified three LST-preference states (uniformly preferring LSTs, rejecting LSTs except intravenous nutrition support, and mixed LST preferences) and three received LST states (uniformly receiving LSTs, received intravenous nutrition only, and selectively receiving LSTs). Concordance was not significantly higher in the experimental than the control arm (kappa [95% CI]: 0.126 [0.032, 0.221] vs. 0.050 [-0.028, 0.128]; arm difference: odds ratio [95% CI]: 1.008 [0.675, 1.5001]). Preferred-received LST-state concordance was facilitated by accurate prognostic awareness, better quality of life, and more depressive symptoms, whereas concordance was impeded by more anxiety symptoms.ConclusionsOur advance care planning intervention did not facilitate concordance between terminally ill cancer patients' preferred and received LST states, but patient value-concordant end-of-life care may be facilitated by interventions to cultivate accurate prognostic awareness, improve quality of life, support depressive patients, and clarify anxious patients' overexpectations of LST efficacy.Copyright © 2019 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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