Journal of palliative medicine
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Background: Gastrostomy (feeding) tubes are one way of managing swallowing impairments (dysphagia) in patients living with serious illnesses. For patients, families, and health care providers to make well-informed, preference-aligned decisions regarding gastrostomy tube placement, each group must understand the other's goals, concerns, and perspectives. Objective: Thus, the goal of this scoping review is to characterize the factors influencing gastrostomy tube placement decisions for people with serious illnesses. ⋯ Finally, health care providers prioritized decisional control (58% of studies), knowledge (53%), quality of life (47%), extending life (42%), and societal factors (42%). Conclusions: Our results highlight key factors that may help center patient preferences when making gastrostomy tube-related decisions, as well as critical areas where more research is needed to help improve decision-making surrounding gastrostomy tube placement. Providing adequate knowledge and understanding patient preferences is critical for patients to make high-quality medical decisions regarding gastrostomy tubes.