Williams Nia, Dunford Charlotte, Knowles Alice, Warner James
Department of Psychological Medicine, Imperial College London, UK.
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2007 Dec;22(12):1229-34. doi: 10.1002/gps.1819.
Issues surrounding end of life care, such as how aggressively to treat life threatening medical conditions in patients with dementia and when, if ever, to withhold or withdraw treatment require further scrutiny and debate.
We conducted a cross-sectional survey to elicit the views of the general public on euthanasia and life-sustaining treatments in the face of dementia.
Seven hundred and twenty-five members of the general public completed this questionnaire throughout London and the South East. In the face of severe dementia, less than 40% of respondents would wish to be resuscitated after a heart attack, nearly three-quarters wanted to be allowed to die passively and almost 60% agreed with physician assisted suicide. Respondents were more likely to be in favour of life-sustaining treatments for their partner than for themselves and the opposite was true regarding euthanasia. White respondents were significantly more likely to refuse life-sustaining treatment and to agree to euthanasia compared with black and Asian respondents.
Our survey suggests that a large proportion of the UK general public do not wish for life-sustaining treatments if they were to become demented and the majority agreed with various forms of euthanasia.
围绕临终护理的问题，如对痴呆症患者危及生命的医疗状况应采取何种积极程度的治疗，以及何时（如果有必要的话）停止或撤销治疗，需要进一步审视和辩论。
我们进行了一项横断面调查，以了解公众对痴呆症患者安乐死和维持生命治疗的看法。
伦敦和东南部地区的725名普通公众完成了这份问卷。面对严重痴呆症，不到40%的受访者希望在心脏病发作后接受复苏，近四分之三的人希望被允许被动死亡，近60%的人同意医生协助自杀。受访者更倾向于为伴侣而非自己提供维持生命的治疗，而在安乐死方面则相反。与黑人和亚洲受访者相比，白人受访者显著更有可能拒绝维持生命的治疗并同意安乐死。
我们的调查表明，如果英国普通公众患上痴呆症，很大一部分人不希望接受维持生命的治疗，且大多数人同意各种形式的安乐死。
