Watchful waiting (also watch and wait or WAW) is an approach to a medical problem in which time is allowed to pass before medical intervention or therapy is used. During this time, repeated testing may be performed.
Related terms include expectant management, active surveillance and masterly inactivity. The term masterly inactivity is also used in nonmedical contexts.
A distinction can be drawn between watchful waiting and medical observation, but some sources equate the terms. Usually, watchful waiting is an outpatient process and it may have a duration of months or years. In contrast, medical observation usually is an inpatient process, often involving frequent or even continuous monitoring, and may have a duration of hours or days.
Famous quotes containing the words watchful and/or waiting:
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train,
Pallas Athena in that straight back and arrogant head:
All the Olympians; a thing never known again.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)