Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making
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Health-state utilities are essential for cost-utility analysis. Few estimates exist for liver disease in the literature. The authors' aim was to conduct a systematic review of health-state utilities in liver disease, to look at the variation of study designs used, and to pool utilities for some liver disease states. ⋯ The authors have created a valuable liver disease- based utility resource from which researchers and policy makers can easily view all available utility estimates from the literature. They have also estimated health-state utilities for major states of hepatitis C.
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When a patient is too incapacitated to make important end-of-life decisions, doctors may ask a preappointed surrogate to predict the patient's preferences and make decisions on the patient's behalf. The current study investigates whether surrogates project their own views onto what they predict the patients' preferences are. ⋯ When surrogates inaccurately predict the CPR v. DNR and extend life v. relieve pain preferences of seriously ill, hospitalized loved ones, surrogates' prediction errors often represent surrogates' own wishes for the patient.