American journal of kidney diseases : the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Families' and physicians' predictions of dialysis patients' preferences regarding life-sustaining treatments in Japan.
Substituted judgment traditionally has been used often for patient care in Japan regardless of the patient's competency. It has been believed that patient preferences are understood intuitively by family and caregivers. However, there are no data to support this assumption. ⋯ Our study suggests that patients who want to spend their end-of-life period as they want should leave better advance directives.