Compliance with New York State's do-not-resuscitate law at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A review of patient deaths.

We reviewed the case records of 141 patients (134 with cancer and seven with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) who died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center between July 11 and September 19, 1991. Do-not-resuscitate orders had been written on 115 (85.8%) of the patients with cancer and all of the patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The do-not-resuscitate orders appeared to be valid, in that evidence of informed consent was documented in all but two of the cases. Six additional patients who died had family consent not to resuscitate, although no do-not-resuscitate orders were written. Two other patients died unexpectedly. The remaining 11 patients all received aggressive attempts at resuscitation, which were felt to be medically appropriate in all but two cases. The interval between the do-not-resuscitate order and death was between zero and 60 days, with an average of 8.4 days and a median of 6 days; it exceeded 20 days in 14 cases. We attribute the high degree of compliance with the New York State do-not-resuscitate law observed in this study to an intensive program of consultation and education begun in 1987 by the Ethics Committee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.