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 mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two opposites.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring’s decision.... It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)