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  Vol. 290 No. 22, December 10, 2003 TABLE OF CONTENTS
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End-of-Life Practices in European Intensive Care Units

Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Sprung and colleagues1 stated that "active shortening of the dying process" was rare in their sample and affected only 2% of patients who died after life-sustaining treatment was withheld or withdrawn.

A recent European survey,2 on the other hand, has indicated that 40% of ICU physicians admitted that they sometimes administered drugs to hasten death. Likewise, physicians at neonatal ICUs in 2 European countries admitted with significant frequency (in France, 73% of respondents; in the Netherlands, 47%) that they had decided to administer drugs with the purpose of ending the patient's life.3 In Italy, a survey found that the deliberate use of lethal doses of drugs was admitted by about 4% of ICU physicians and was considered ethically acceptable by about 16%.4

Although prospective studies cannot be compared with questionnaire-based surveys, overall these results imply that this practice in not as uncommon as Sprung et al . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Alberto Giannini, MD
Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care
Istituti Clinici di Perfezionamento
Milan, Italy


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End-of-Life Practices in European Intensive Care Units: The Ethicus Study
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