Arch Intern Med
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Decisions to withhold or withdraw treatment (nontreatment decisions) become increasingly important because they have to be made more frequently and more explicitly. This nationwide study provides information on the occurrence and background of these nontreatment decisions. ⋯ Nontreatment decisions are made frequently in medical practice. Most often the physician has to weigh medical and nonmedical burdens and benefits. For this to be done properly, the patient should be involved whenever possible. Other requirements are optimal palliative treatment, better prognostic knowledge, consultation of other specialists, and the absence of defensive motives.
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Lower rates of invasive cardiac procedures have been reported for blacks and women than for white men. However, few studies have adjusted for differences in the type of hospital of admission, insurance status, and disease severity. SETTING, DESIGN, AND PARTICIPANTS: Data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey were used to investigate race and sex differences in rates of cardiac catheterization, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, and coronary artery bypass surgery among 10,348 persons hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction. ⋯ Race and sex differentials in the rates of invasive cardiac procedures remained despite matching for the hospital of admission and controlling for other factors that influence procedure rates, suggesting that the race and sex of the patient influence the use of these procedures.
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Living wills are considered clear and convincing evidence of a person's preferences for end-of-life treatment. Unfortunately, living wills often use vague language that forces physicians and others to infer specific treatment choices, like the choice to forgo cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). To test the validity of such inferences we examined the relationship between living will completion and CPR preference. We also examined whether CPR choices were fixed or could be influenced by detailed information on CPR. ⋯ Preferences for CPR among subjects with living wills are not homogeneous, but distributed across the clinical scenarios. Therefore, one cannot infer CPR preference from the mere presence of a living will. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation information can influence preferences even among persons with living wills, implying that preferences are neither fixed nor always based on adequate information. Physicians should view vaguely worded documents as unreliable expressions of treatment preference that should not supplant informed discussion.
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Review Practice Guideline Guideline
Ethical considerations in the allocation of organs and other scarce medical resources among patients. Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, American Medical Association.
Physicians' efforts on behalf of patients often involve the use of resources that, because of naturally limited supply or economic constraints, are not readily available to all who need them. The dilemma in such cases is how physicians may fulfill their ethical duties to "do all that [they] can for the benefit of the individual patient" when the care that they can provide is constrained by the scarcity of needed resources.