The majority of dying patients would not choose physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia to end their lives, a new study has found.
About one of 10 patients who were terminally ill said they seriously considered using euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. Fewer than 6 percent said they had seriously discussed either measure for themselves or hoarded drugs with the intent of committing suicide.
One patient in the study made an unsuccessful suicide attempt and another died as a result of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.
The study, published in the Nov. 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, is considered to be the first major assessment of attitudes of terminally ill patients regarding the hotly contested issues.
The study found that those who consider euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are affected by depression, feel unappreciated and have substantial need for assistance with basic functions such as eating, dressing, transportation and homemaking.
Researchers also learned that shortness of breath, rather than pain, was the physical symptom most closely tied to first thoughts of physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
“Improving end-of-life care has often been framed as a question of permitting either physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the lead investigator for the study and chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institute of Health.
“But these issues are largely irrelevant and distract us from attending to the real issues of the dying: depression and meeting patients’ needs for all kinds of help in their everyday lives.” The authors of the study caution that doctors who receive requests for physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia should not consider patients to be settled on such requests.
Half of those who initially considered either way of ending their lives changed their minds at a follow-up interview.
An almost equal number of patients who did not consider those measures in the first interview changed their minds in a follow-up interview.
The study was based on interviews of 988 terminally ill adults and their primary caregivers in March 1996 and March 1997. No margin of error was calculated for the study, Emanuel said. (RNS)
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