Rationale and Design of a Multicenter Trial on Exploratory Analysis of the Effects of Advance Care Planning Guided by the Prediction Program of Heart Failure Prognosis on Quality of Life in Patients With Heart Failure - ACQUAINT-Trial.

Preplanning of care is necessary for patients with endstage heart failure (HF), but advance care planning (ACP) before the loss of a patient's comprehensive capacity is not yet routine for the public or the medical community. The challenge in accurately predicting a patient's prognosis is a strong barrier to implementing ACP. To address this problem, several models for risk stratification have been proposed and are available in clinical settings. We randomized the procedure to provide estimated patient survival information to attending physicians and then assessed whether there was a change in (1) the frequency of ACP initiation occurred (physician-side evaluation), and/or (2) the patients' quality of life, including mental state (patient-side evaluation). This multicenter, open-label, single-blinded randomized clinical trial aims to assess the hypothesis that providing information on the estimated survival of a patient to the attending physicians will improve the frequency of ACP initiation and quality of life in patients with HF.