Life-sustaining treatment preferences in older patients when referred to the emergency department for acute geriatric assessment: a descriptive study in a Dutch hospital.

Background: In many cases, life-sustaining treatment preferences are not timely discussed with older patients. Advance care planning (ACP) offers medical professionals an opportunity to discuss patients' preferences. We assessed how often these preferences were known when older patients were referred to the emergency department (ED) for an acute geriatric assessment.