We performed 2 MEDLINE searches of English
language articles published between August 1967
and January 2007. In the first search, we used MEDLINE
to cross-index ‘‘goal’’ or ‘‘goals’’ in the title or
abstract with 7 Medical Subject Heading (MeSH)
terms: advance care planning, life support care,
palliative care, terminal care, terminally ill, value of
life, and withholding treatment. In the second search,
we cross-indexed ‘‘goal’’ or ‘‘goals’’ in the title or
abstract with theMeSHtermdecisionmaking. (There
is no MeSH term for goals of care.) We also used
‘‘goals of care’’ to search for relevant articles through
the Web of Science. The first search produced 1346
articles, the second 2862 articles, and the third
100 articles, for a total of 4308 articles. Of these
4308 articles, 316 were duplicates, so the total number
of articles was 3992.