ArticleCritical care medicine2019
What Does the Word "Treatable" Mean? Implications for Communication and Decision-Making in Critical Illness.
Article in Critical care medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- A Qualitative Analysis of Physician Communication During Brain Death Conversations: Dead With a Heartbeat.Neurology. Clinical practice · 2025Article
- "Treatable not curable": trade-offs in the use of treatment-oriented language with patients who have incurable cancer.The oncologist · 2025Article
- [Time-limited trials (TLT) in the intensive care unit : Recommendations from the ethics section of the DIVI and the ethics section of the DGIIN].Medizinische Klinik, Intensivmedizin und Notfallmedizin · 2024Review
- Factors Associated With Provision of Nonbeneficial Surgery: A National Survey of Surgeons.Annals of surgery · 2023Article
- Pitfalls and Traps in the Surgical Evaluation of Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).Journal of gastrointestinal surgery : official journal of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract · 2023Article
- Characterizing the Language Used to Discuss Death in Family Meetings for Critically Ill Infants.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Communication and Well-Being Considerations in Disorders of Consciousness.Neurocritical care · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesTo explore how nonphysicians and physicians interpret the word "treatable" in the context of critical illness.
designQualitative study using in-depth interviews.
settingOne academic medical center. SUBJECTS: Twenty-four nonphysicians (patients and community members) purposively sampled for variation in demographic characteristics and 24 physicians (attending physicians and trainees) purposively sampled from four specialties (critical care, palliative care, oncology, and surgery).
interventionsNone. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN
resultsWe identified two distinct concepts that participants used to interpret the word "treatable": 1) a "good news" concept, in which the word "treatable" conveys a positive message about a patient's future, thereby inspiring hope and encouraging further treatment and 2) an "action-oriented" concept, in which the word "treatable" conveys that physicians have an action or intervention available, but does not necessarily imply an improved prognosis or quality of life. The overwhelming majority of nonphysicians adopted the "good news" concept, whereas physicians almost exclusively adopted the "action-oriented" concept. For some nonphysicians, the word "treatable" conveyed a positive message about prognosis and/or further treatment, even when this contradicted previously stated negative information.
conclusionsPhysician use of the word "treatable" may lead patients or surrogates to derive unwarranted good news and false encouragement to pursue treatment, even when physicians have explicitly stated information to the contrary. Further work is needed to determine the extent to which the word "treatable" and its cognates contribute to widespread decision-making and communication challenges in critical care, including discordance about prognosis, misconceptions that palliative treatments are curative, and disputes about potentially inappropriate or futile treatment.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.