OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of age on hospital resource use for seriously ill adults, and to explore whether age-related differences in resource use are explained by patients' severity of illness and preferences for ...

BACKGROUND: Medical treatment decisions should be based on the preferences of informed patients or their proxies and on the expected outcomes of treatment. Because seriously ill patients are at risk for cardiac arrest, examination ...

BACKGROUND: Renal failure requiring dialysis in the setting of hospitalization for serious illness is a poor prognostic sign, and dialysis and aggressive care are sometimes withheld. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine symptoms and treatments among hospitalized adults in the last 2 days of life. METHODS: Review of 72 consecutive medical records of patients who died at an academic medical center and 32 consecutive medical ...

BACKGROUND: Older age is associated with less aggressive treatment and higher short-term mortality due to serious illness. It is not known whether less aggressive care contributes to this survival disadvantage in elderly ...

CONTEXT: The epidemiology of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders for hospitalized patients has been reported, but little is known about factors associated with the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). OBJECTIVE: To identify ...

BACKGROUND: Patient age may influence decisions to withhold life-sustaining treatments, independent of patients' preferences for or ability to benefit from such treatments. Controversy exists about the appropriateness of ...