The New England Journal of Medicine
e-mail icon  FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |    Advanced Search
Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe
 
Correspondence
PreviousPrevious
Volume 349:1777-1779 October 30, 2003 Number 18
NextNext

Patients Who Refuse Food and Fluids to Hasten Death

Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

 Sign up for free e-toc
 

This Article
-Full Text
- PDF
-PDA Full Text
-Purchase this article

Tools and Services
-Add to Personal Archive
-Add to Citation Manager
-Notify a Friend
-E-mail When Cited
-E-mail When Letters Appear

More Information
-Related Article
by Jacobs, S.
-Related Article
by Ganzini, L.
-PubMed Citation
To the Editor: The results from the study by Ganzini et al. (July 24 issue)1 were certainly thought provoking. However, it would have been interesting to learn how family members perceived the quality of the deaths of these patients. Physicians and nurses often underestimate the amount of pain that patients report2 and may also underestimate the distress of the dying.

A recent article in the New York Times gave anecdotal evidence that family members may perceive these deaths differently.3 Jane Gross describes the death of her mother in a nursing home after she had refused food and hydration. She reports . . . [Full Text of this Article]



HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org

Comments and questions? Please contact us.

The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2009 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.