Authors’ Response

It is with great enthusiasm that we read the letter written by Nakagawa and Blinderman in response to our study "Pre-Ventricular Assist Device Palliative Care Consultation: A Qualitative Analysis." Our study concluded that one-time palliative care (PC) consultations prior to implantation of destination-therapy ventricular assist device do not lead to completion of preparedness planning or even general palliative care assessment at our institution. We suggested a number of potential explanations for this finding, including the short time between PC consultation and surgery, a lack of consensus among the PC and heart failure teams about the purpose of the PC consult and what preparedness planning should entail, and finally a lack of familiarity with LVAD related complications among members of the PC team.

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