Article Text
PDFLetter
Response to: increasing use of DNR orders in the elderly worldwide: whose choice is it
Statistics from Altmetric.com
I read Dr Cherniack’s article regarding do not resuscitate (DNR) orders with interest.1 One of the problems with DNR orders is the patients’ assumption that if there is no DNR order they will survive resuscitative efforts. This of course is far from the truth. In my hospital these orders have been modified to “do not attempt to resuscitate” orders. One cannot be truly autonomous without being informed. Long term survival, as measured only by being alive, following inhouse cardiac arrest, is about 15% over all age groups.2 In sick elderly patients over 70 years of age who survive a cardiac arrest, the subsequent hospital mortality approaches 100%. This fact, and concerns about harm, influence physicians’ attitudes, …
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Honouring patient's resuscitation wishes: a multiphased effort to improve identification and documentation
- Increasing use of DNR orders in the elderly worldwide: whose choice is it?
- Variation in the design of Do Not Resuscitate orders and other code status options: a multi-institutional qualitative study
- Effect of do-not-resuscitate orders on patients with sepsis in the medical intensive care unit: a retrospective, observational and propensity score-matched study in a tertiary referral hospital in Taiwan
- Evaluation of end of life care in cancer patients at a teaching hospital in Japan
- Scale of levels of care versus DNR orders
- “Do-not-resuscitate” orders in patients with cancer at a children’s hospital in Taiwan
- Are do-not-resuscitate orders associated with limitations of care beyond their intended purpose in patients with acute intracerebral haemorrhage? Analysis of the ABC-ICH study
- Should patient consent be required to write a do not resuscitate order?
- Deconstructing DNR