End-of-Life Decisions in Surgical Intensive Care Medicine - The Relevance of Treatment Withholding

Charité University Medicine Berlin

Status: Completed

Conditions: Quality of Life

Treatments: Other: retrospective analysis

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02521428

EOLD_T

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this retrospective observational study is to describe the sequence of ICU-therapies that are limited and to compare characteristics and the decision making process in surgical ICU-patients.

Full description

Decisions to limit life-support therapy are common on the intensive care unit (ICU). End-of-life decisions (EOLD) underlie a dynamic process and limitation of ICU-therapies is done sequentially. Questionnaire-based and observational studies on medical ICUs and in palliative care reveal blood transfusions as the first therapy physicians withhold in EOLDs. Whether this practice also applies to surgical ICU-patients is unknown.

The purpose of this retrospective observational study is to describe the sequence of ICU-therapies that are limited and to compare characteristics and the decision making process in surgical ICU-patients.

Enrollment: 226 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All surgical patients admitted to the ICU All surgical patients discharged death from the ICU

Exclusion criteria

• All patients discharged alive from the ICU