Withdrawal of life support often an imperfect compromise

Intensive Care Unit (ICU) doctors seeking to balance the complex needs of their patients and the patients' families may make an imperfect compromise, withdrawing life support systems over a prolonged period of time. This practice is much more common than previously believed, and is also surprisingly associated with higher satisfaction with care-at least among surviving family members.

"We found that sequential withdrawal of life support is not as rare a phenomenon as previously believed," wrote J. Randall Curtis, M.D., M.P.H., section chief for pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Harborview Medical Center and the University of Washington, in Seattle. "It occurred in nearly half of the patients we studied."

The findings will be published in the second issue for October of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society. The study was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research.

Dr. Curtis and colleagues examined medical charts and family questionnaires for more than 500 patients who had died at the ICU or within 24 hours of discharge out of a pool of 2,003 consecutive patients in 15 Seattle or Tacoma hospitals. During their final days, the patients studied were on a median of four life-support systems, from mechanical ventilation to tube feeding.

Interestingly, among patients whose stays at the ICU were more prolonged, families seemed to be more satisfied when the withdrawal process was longer. "This finding is in the opposite direction to our original hypothesis," wrote Dr. Curtis, noting that "a longer duration of withdrawal of life support seems unlikely to be beneficial for the patient because it represents the prolongation of non-beneficial and sometimes painful therapies in a situation in which life-sustaining therapies are being withdrawn in anticipation of death."