Listening to Patients

The paper by Stevenson et al. (1) in this issue of the Journal is, on first reading, an interesting report on how patients with advanced heart failure report their priorities for quality versus quantify of life using an arcane questionnaire called the time trade-off (TTO). On closer reading, however, the paper is much more than that. It is a call for cardiologists and patients to change the way they discuss choices about therapy.