Drs. Lala and Mentz @dranulala @MountSinai @robmentz #JCF #WordsMatter Moving from “Candidacy” To “Benefit Derived”

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Anuradha Lala, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Cardiology, Associate Professor, Population Health Science and Policy at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Robert John Mentz, MD, Associate Professor of MedicineAssociate Professor in Population Health Sciences, Member in the Duke Clinical Research Institute at Duke University. In this video, she speaks about the article #WordsMatter Continued: Moving from “Candidacy” To “Benefit Derived”.

 

As professionals who care for patients suffering from heart failure, we are all too familiar with such phrases.

Consider yourself a patient who has been told that you are not a "candidate" for a particular therapy. Is this language likely to make you feel marginalized? Ill-fated? Denied? Such difficulties have recently come to light in relation to the need for COVID-19 vaccination prior to being listed for heart transplantation.

The definition of the candidate, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, covers the following:

 

a:

 

one who wants to, is nominated for, or qualifies for a position, membership, or honor

 

b:

 

one who is likely to go through or be chosen for something specific

 

Complex integrated decision-making, as is prevalent in clinical practice, contributes to our patients' "fate." However, this is another important proof of how much our #wordsmatter. Our goal is not to determine fate. It is not to favor one patient over another or to refuse anyone life-saving treatment. Rather, our aim and role are to serve as resource stewards while also assisting in determining the amount to which a patient will benefit from a certain therapy (based on aggregated experience and data).

 

So we've been debating... Why not phrase it that way if that is the intention?

 

Consider the following phrase in place of the preceding:

 

"Mr. X is unlikely to benefit from heart transplantation at this time due to active colon cancer (which would grow due to post-transplant immunosuppression)."

 

Or

 

"Ms. Y is unlikely to benefit appreciably from sustained LVAD installation at this time due to past stroke, severe peripheral vascular disease, and recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding, all of which put her at high risk of post-surgical complications and mortality."

 

These rephrasing issues also apply to medical therapies:

 

"The patient is unlikely to benefit from sacubitril/valsartan at this time due to significant symptomatic hypotension - which may worsen after medication administration."

 

Articulating why an individual may or may not benefit from therapy at a certain time allows us to communicate more effectively - not only with patients and their loved ones but also among physicians. Furthermore, rather than conveying judgmental feelings, this approach emphasizes nonmaleficence, in which decisions are balanced against all benefits, risks, and consequences. Circumstances change, and assessments based on the current level of expected benefit from a therapy might be evaluated at individualized intervals.

 

Heart failure is a disease with unacceptably high morbidity and fatality rates. Let us focus on how we relay and convey information as we attempt to enhance therapeutic outcomes. At JCF, we know that our #wordsmatter — to patients, their families, each other, and the communities we serve – whether it's changing "failure" to "function", replacing "non-compliance" with "barriers to adherence", or shifting from "candidacy" to "extent of benefit obtained."