The impact of advance care planning on end of life care in elderly patients: randomised controlled trial

Used in 2 entries

For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.

1. [1] Advance directive timing Decision · inaction side

   Statistic

   Among families of patients who died, 30% in the control (no advance care planning) group had clinically significant depression (score >8) vs 0% in the intervention group (P=0.002); anxiety 19% vs 0% (P=0.02); high PTSD risk 15% vs 0% (P=0.03)

   “"In the intervention group, family members of patients who died had significantly less stress (intervention 5, control 15; P<0.001), anxiety (intervention 0, control 3; P=0.02), and depression (intervention 0, control 5; P=0.002) than those of the control patients."”

   Calculation notes

   Detering et al. BMJ 2010 — RCT of 309 patients 80 years or older admitted to an Australian hospital, with 56 patients dying by 6-month follow-up. Table 3 reports clinically significant outcomes among bereaved families: depression (score >8) 8/27 (30%) control vs 0/29 (0%) intervention, P=0.002; anxiety (>8) 19% vs 0%, P=0.02; high PTSD risk (Impact of Events >30) 15% vs 0%, P=0.03. The ~30% control-group depression rate is used as the inaction-side proxy: bereaved families of those who deferred ACP showed markedly higher distress than those whose relatives completed it. Note: the RCT is in elderly (80+) hospital inpatients, not middle-age preventive completion; the effect may be smaller for deferral at 45 vs 79.
   

   Source date: 2010-03-23 · Accessed: 2026-05-04

2. [2] MAID vs hospice Decision · inaction side

   Statistic

   Among families of patients who died (29 intervention vs 27 control), control-group relatives had clinically significant depression 30% (8/27), anxiety 19% (5/27) and high PTSD risk 15% (4/27); the advance-care-planning group was 0% on all three

   “[Paraphrase from Table 3 — BMJ full text paywalled; figures verified via PMC2844949] Among family members of the patients who died, in the control group (no advance care planning) clinically significant depression occurred in 30% (8/27), anxiety in 19% (5/27), and post-traumatic stress in 15% (4/27); in the intervention (advance care planning) group the corresponding rate was 0% on each measure ("scores of this level occurred only in the family members of control group patients who had died"). Family members of intervention patients were more satisfied with the quality of dying.”

   Calculation notes

   Detering et al. BMJ 2010 RCT of 309 elderly inpatients (PMID 20332506; family-outcome subgroup: 56 deceased, 29 intervention / 27 control). Verbatim from Table 3: control-group bereaved relatives showed depression 30% (8/27), anxiety 19% (5/27), high PTSD risk 15% (4/27); the ACP group was 0% on all three. (The earlier excerpt's "15% in the ACP group" was wrong — 15% is the control-group PTSD figure; the ACP group was 0%.) These are family distress measures, not MAID-specific regret; cited as a corroborating signal that ~1 in 4–1 in 3 bereaved relatives suffer significant distress when end-of-life care/planning is not optimised, consistent with the inaction-side ~25% unmet-needs proxy.
   

   Source date: 2010-03-23 · Accessed: 2026-06-30