Effect of Neonatal Outcome Estimates on Decision-Making Preferences of Mothers Facing Preterm Birth

Abstract

Extremely preterm infants born before a gestational age (GA) of 25 weeks are in a prognostic gray zone, 1 which means that outcomes are poor but not hopeless and that life-sustaining treatments are not obligatory. Treatment decisions are value-laden and challenging 2 and ought to be shared between parents and physicians while imperatively aligned with parental preferences. When counseling parents, physicians commonly present numerical outcome estimates 5 and may assume that parents derive their preferences from them. However, it is unknown whether probabilistic data affect parents' choices in prognostic gray zones. Here, we hypothesized that better or worse neonatal outcome estimates do not affect expectant mothers' preferences for life-sustaining treatments.