French intensivists do not apply American recommendations regarding decisions to forgo life-sustaining therapy

Objective., Recommendations for making and implementing decisions to forgo life-sustaining therapy in intensive care units have been developed in the United States, but the extent that they are realized in practice has yet to be measured. Design. Prospective, multicenter, 4-wk study. For each patient with an impl emented decision to forgo life-sustaining therapy, the deliberation and dec ision implementation procedures were recorded. Setting., French intensive care units. Patients., All consecutive patients admitted to 26 French intensive care un its. Interventions. None. Measurements and Main Results. Of 1,009 patients admitted, 208 died in the intensive care unit. A decision to forgo life-sustaining therapy was implem ented in 105 patients. The number of supportive treatments forgone was 2.3 +/- 1.7 per patient. Decisions to forgo sustaining therapy were preceded by 3.5 +/- 2.5 deliberation sessions. Proxies were informed of the deliberati ons in 62 (59.1%) cases but participated in only 18 (17.1%) decisions. The patient's perception of his or her quality of life was rarely evaluated (11 .5%), and only rarely did the decision involve evaluating the patient's wis hes (7.6%), the patient's religious values (7.6%), or the cost of treatment (7.6%). Factors most frequently evaluated were medical team advice (95.3%) , predicted reversibility of acute disease (90.5%), underlying disease seve rity (83.9%), and the patient's quality of life as evaluated by caregivers (80.1%). Conclusions. A decision to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining therapy was implemented for half the patients who died in the French intensive care un its studied. In many cases, the decision was taken without regard for one o r more factors identified as relevant in U.S. guidelines.