Argos(FGCU)Stop Medical Intervention for Terminal Patients

Certain diseases are terminal. Pancreatic cancer, for example, which took the life of the Carnegie Mellon professor who wrote The Last Lecture, has the lowest survival rate of any cancer with only 5% of patients living 5 years past diagnosis. There is a surgery for pancreatic cancer called the Whipple which is named after a famous surgeon. This surgery is expensive (on average $31, 659), risky, and doesn’t significantly improve outcome. Some surgeons refer to this surgery as palliative surgery. This means that there is not much medical benefit except for comfort the patient receives from trying all possibilities. We should be more realistic about prognostic outcomes and stop wasting medical resources. It would be best if people with terminal diseases were placed in palliative care programs rather than having surgeries and prolonged hospital stays. We should be more open to the idea of preparing patients with the fact that death is a reasonable outcome and provide support not needless medical intervention.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100294751

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/19/60minutes/main5711689.shtml?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

This entry was posted on 29. November 2009 at 07:26 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.