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Objective: To determine whether the wording of the descriptions of life‐sustaining interventions would affect the choices elderly patients make when completing advance directives.

Methods: Survey.

Setting: General community in Omaha, Nebraska.

Patients: Two hundred one community‐dwelling elderly were selected from a population‐based sample.

Main Outcome Measures: Subjects were asked whether they would accept or reject three life‐sustaining interventions: cardiopulmonary resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, or tube feeding in three separate hypothetical case scenarios. The three life‐sustaining interventions were each described positively, negatively, and exactly as they are worded in a widely used advance directive. Subjects reviewed each scenario three times with three different descriptions of the three interventions.

Results: For the three interventions presented in three scenarios, subjects opted …