IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0098545.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Current Situation and Associated Factors of Withdrawing or Withholding Life Support to Patients in an Intensive Care Unit of Cancer Center in China

Author

Listed:
  • Qingyu Zhao
  • Xiaodan Zhang
  • Yi Fang
  • Jian Gong
  • Baochun Gu
  • Gang Ma

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the current situation and analyze the associated factors of withdrawing or withholding life support in the intensive care unit (ICU) of our cancer center. Methods: Three hundred and twenty-two cancer patients in critical status were admitted to our ICU in 2010 and 2011. They were included in the study and were classified into two groups: withdrawing or withholding life support (WWLS), and full life support (FLS). Demographic information and clinical data were collected and compared between the two groups. Factors associated with withdrawing or withholding life support were analyzed with univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results: Eighty-two of the 322 cases (25.5% of all) made the decisions to withdraw or withhold life support. Emergency or critical condition at hospital admission, higher scores of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) in 12 hours after ICU admission, financial difficulties and humanistic care requirements are important factors associated with withdrawing or withholding life support. Conclusions: Withdrawing or withholding life support is not uncommon in critically ill cancer patients in China. Characteristics and associated factors of the decision-making are related to the current medical system, medical resources and traditional culture of the country.

Suggested Citation

  • Qingyu Zhao & Xiaodan Zhang & Yi Fang & Jian Gong & Baochun Gu & Gang Ma, 2014. "Current Situation and Associated Factors of Withdrawing or Withholding Life Support to Patients in an Intensive Care Unit of Cancer Center in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-7, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0098545
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098545
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098545
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098545&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0098545?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hsiao-Ting Chang & Ming-Hwai Lin & Chun-Ku Chen & Tzeng-Ji Chen & Shinn-Jang Hwang, 2020. "Nurses’ Experiences and Factors Related to Their Attitudes Regarding Discussions with Patients and Family Members about Do-Not-Resuscitate Decisions and Life-Sustaining Treatment Withdrawal: A Hospita," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(2), pages 1-12, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0098545. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.