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How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

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Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#131

Post by rlpb »

teiferer wrote: post #92
bruce511 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people will take any treatment offered. Indeed I would. That's a perfectly acceptable approach. Yes, medical treatments are improving and hanging on is a good approach cause something may be around the corner. I don't think the article is advocating for no treatment ever. I think it is advocating for a balanced understanding of what treatment looks like, and balances that with quality of life. And indeed bala…

Agreeing with your overall sentiment, but this caught my eye: > If I'm 80, I'm (somewhat) less concerned with length of life, and more concerned with quality. If I'm 50 that's a different equation Why is that? Is quality less important at 50? Would you be more willing to endure suffering if you are younger? Why? I'm thinking that no matter age, people would generally like to avoid a painful death. Maybe it's because…

What if you have young kids? It might be worth the suffering for their benefit.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#132

Post by Kinrany »

teiferer wrote: post #127
mchinen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you knowledgeable about this, and are you talking about the established institutions? If so please explain.

You can start by reading about Larry Johnson's whistleblower story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Johnson_(author)

From this description, the main controversy is the allegation of hastening the death of the patient. Not sure where's the scam though.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#133

Post by fhdkweig »

Alien1Being wrote: post #69

Last week one of my patients with preterminal NYHA Stage IV cardiac failure looked into euthanasia. He found predictably that it is now legal in my country but takes months and formidable legal resources to obtain it. Legalisation of euthanasia has, as everyone in the field warned multiple times, made it much harder to obtain and now requires a lot of time, effort and money. The well meaning, naive proponents of lega…

> The well meaning, naive proponents of legalisation of euthanasia have actually made things a lot harder for those who want it.

That sounds like the actions of a politician who wants to claim they are for something while secretly trying to destroy it. It doesn't seem "well meaning" to me.

That's what the US Republicans did to the ObamaCare act.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#134

Post by fhdkweig »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #60
netsharc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a "culture war" (the rightwing government intervening due to religious reasons) in the 2000's involving a "DNR"-esque case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case

Let us not forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ann_Quinlan And also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahi_McMath_case But it is disingenuous to invoke "rightwing government", when a Franciscan friar was sneaking into the hospital trying to feed a starving woman [Terri], who was so hated by her husband that he would take extreme measures to get rid of her. I have found it quite elusive to get a DNR properly execut…

> But it is disingenuous to invoke "rightwing government", when a Franciscan friar was sneaking into the hospital trying to feed a starving woman [Terri], who was so hated by her husband that he would take extreme measures to get rid of her.

I don't think he hated her, he just didn't want to be under the crushing medical debt to keep someone alive who wasn't really alive.

And absolutely there was Rightwing government involved. Here is an entire wiki article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_involvement_in_the_...

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#135

Post by blobcode »

ezoe wrote: post #126

I think I've read the exact thing like 20 or 30 years ago. But I wonder... isn't it US specific local trend where medical bill is ridiculous? There is no way ICU cost 10K USD/day... except in US.

ICU costs are quite high in general, often 3-4x a regular bed, and about 5k USD average in countries such as Canada and the UK.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#136

Post by mistic92 »

____tom____ wrote: post #25

On the spectrum or go gentle vs fight, I'd have to say, now is the time is history where "fight" makes the most sense. This is not abstract for me. I have not one, but two forms of cancer. Both were considered incurable when I was diagnosed. Both have treatments now that, IN SOME PEOPLE, lead to remission. I still don't know which group I am, but I'd be dead from either one by now, if I hadn't elected to treat. New t…

I really hope for colorectal cancer treatment for my father, like daily checking if there is something new

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#137

Post by tsss »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #82
djoldman wrote: post #4

> Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack... He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. > Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to…

> It's interesting that our laws punish homicide with maximum criminal penalties, but the opposite (keeping someone alive against their wishes) seems to be assault and battery at worst, with much much lighter punishment Is it? One action is reversible and the other is not. And it's not very rare that moral systems treat an action and its opposite in different ways (cooperating with police vs hindering, rendering aid…

It's not reversible. You can't undo the suffering that has been inflicted on the patient.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#138

Post by LorenPechtel »

tpoacher wrote: post #77

This article is making a LOT of "convenient" assumptions. For all we know, the more likely scenario is that Charlie, like a sizeable percentage of his doctor peers, was burnt out, tired, and depressed, did not really have an overwhelming (some might say "healthy") desire to survive (in fact, perhaps quite the opposite), and saw the cancer as a non-undignified quick "way out". Doctors (and medical professionals more g…

Why do you think this was basically a form of suicide?

Pancreatic cancer still has a dismal "survival" rate, and I hesitate to even call it "survival" as it's more a matter of not having died yet. He's seen what chemotherapy does to patients, he knows it's trading the horrors of chemo for a bit longer life. That article is 10 years old--pancreatic cancer is still very deadly. No reprieve was coming down the road.

False hope generally leads to inferior outcomes.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#139

Post by LorenPechtel »

lostlogin wrote: post #62
clukic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. CPR initiated within 2 minutes of cardiac arrest increases survival rate by 81%. The fact that CPR is rarely initiated so quickly (and thus survival rates are extremely low), says nothing about the efficacy of CPR. In the best cases where CPR is initiated https://newsroom.heart.org/news/bystander-cpr-up-to-10-minut...

I struggle square those numbers with the ones below, showing 11% survival (22% making it to hospital alive). I can’t find a source for it, but I’m told that survival after an arrest in hospital is actually lower, due to the co-morbidities that patients have. https://www.resus.org.nz/assets/OHCA_All_NZ_Feb23.pdf

A big increase in a small number can still be a small number.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#140

Post by LorenPechtel »

j-conn wrote: post #3
ggm wrote: post #2

> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital. This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic…

Totally misleading. Early CPR (+AED if available) absolutely saves lives. Article is from 2011 by a family med doctor. Overly aggressive resuscitation attempts are definitely a problem but context matters

Note how the data gets contaminated here.

CPR is simply buying time, at best it can delay death in the hope the doctors can do something about whatever caused the heart to quit. Usually they can't.

AED is different. Despite what Hollywood would have you believe the shocker does not start your heart and it is never used on a stopped heart. Shocking is about the heart beating ineffectively. It has a chance of actually treating the problem, not merely buying time. If the heart is stopped the AED just sits there and says continue CPR. And people blame it for being defective.

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