End-of-Life Care

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End-of-life care (or EoLC) refers to health care for a person with a terminal condition that has become advanced, progressive, and/or incurable. End-of-life care requires a range of decisions, including questions of palliative care, patients' right to self-determination (of treatment, life), medical experimentation, the ethics and efficacy of extraordinary or hazardous medical interventions, and the ethics and efficacy even of continued routine medical interventions.

In addition, end-of-life often touches upon rationing and the allocation of resources in hospitals and national medical systems. Such decisions are informed both by technical, medical considerations, economic factors as well as bioethics. In addition, end-of-life treatments are subject to considerations of patient autonomy.

In most advanced countries, medical spending on those in the last twelve months of life makes up roughly 10% of total aggregate medical spending, and spending on those in the last three years of life can account for up to 25%. Whether or not a physician would be surprised if a person was dead within a set period of time was somewhat accurate at predicting end of life.

Care in the final days and hours of life

Decision making

  • Fragmented, dysfunctional, or grieving families are often unable to make timely decisions that respect the patient's wishes and values. This can result in over-treatment, under-treatment, and other problems. For example, family members may differ over whether life extension or life quality is the main goal of treatment.
  • Family members may also be unable to grasp the inevitability of death and the risks and effects of medical and non-medical interventions. They may demand common treatments, such as antibiotics for pneumonia, or drugs to reduce high blood pressure without wondering whether that person might prefer dying quickly of pneumonia or a heart attack to a long-drawn-out decline in a skilled care facility. Some treatments, such as pureed foods for a person who has trouble swallowing or IV fluids for a person who is actively dying, seem harmless, but can significantly prolong the process of dying.

Our esteemed journal PULACR is looking forward for the upcoming issue (Volume3: Issue 1) for the upcoming issue as all the authors are invited to submit their recent scientific work through manuscripts in the mode of Research/Case Reports/Case Studies/Reviews/Short Review/ Short Communications/Commentaries/Short Commentaries/Letters to Editor/ Image articles etc.,

Manuscripts can be uploaded online at Editorial Tracking System https://www.pulsus.com/submissions/anesthesiology-case-reports.html  or as email attachment to anesthesia@oajournal.org

Thanks and Regards,
Editorial Manager,
Anesthesiology Case Reports
Contact: +32-2-808-7017