Physicians' survival predictions for patients with acute congestive heart failure

Background: Current guidelines suggest that patients with low likelihoods of survival may be excluded from intensive care. Patients with new or exacerbated congestive heart failure are frequently but not inevitably admitted to critical care units. Objective: To assess how well physicians could predict the probability of survival for acutely ill patients with congestive heart failure, and in particular how well they could identify patients with small chances of survival. Methods: This was a prospective cohort study done in the emergency departments of a university hospital, a Veterans Affairs medical center, and a community hospital. The study population was consecutive adults for whom new or exacerbated congestive heart failure, diagnosed clinically, was a major reason for the emergency department visit. Physicians caring for the study patients in the emergency departments recorded their judgments of the numeric probability that each patient would survive for 90 days and for 1 year. The patients' vital status at 90 days and 1 year was ascertained by multiple means, including interview, chart review, and review of hospital and state databases. Results: By calibration curve analysis, the physicians underestimated survival probability at both 90 days and 1 year, particularly for patients they judged to have the lowest probabilities of survival. Their predictions had modest discriminating ability (receiver operating characteristic curve areas, 0.66 [SE=0.020] for 90 days; 0.63 [SE=0.017] for 1 year). The physicians identified only 15 patients they judged to have a 90-day survival probability of 10% or less, whose survival rate was actually 33.3%. Conclusions: Physicians have great difficulty predicting survival for patients with acute congestive heart failure and cannot identify patients with poor chances of survival. Current triage guidelines that suggest patients with poor chances of survival may be excluded from critical care may be impractical or harmful.