The authors emphasize the need to consider continuous reassessment of health care technologies already in use in the face of rising health care costs and of questions about quality and effectiveness. Among the issues covered ...

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is routinely performed on hospitalized patients who suffer cardiac or respiratory arrest. Consent to administer CPR is presumed since the patient is incapable at the moment of arrest ...

There is widespread unwillingness to consider patients with alcoholic cirrhosis for liver transplantation. Cohen and Benjamin examine the two arguments that underlie the exclusion of alcoholics from a potentially life-saving ...

It has been suggested that physicians be allowed to withhold resuscitation without seeking patient consent where the procedure would be a futile intervention. These proposals have been criticized on the grounds that such ...