William Atkins
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 21:23
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 3
A study based out of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States found that terminally ill patients were three times more likely to receive life-prolonging medical procedures during the last week of their lives if they were “positively” religious and spiritual as opposed to being “negatively” religious/spiritual.
The life-prolonging procedures--which were called "intensive" and "invasive" procedures--that the patients used, or didn't use, include being hooked up to a ventilator and getting cardiopulmonary resuscitation after their hearts had stopped.
According to the March 17, 2009 USA Today article
Study: Cancer patients of faith more likely to get intensive treatments, “
The new study shows that those who used "positive" religious coping — such as those "seeking God's love and care," as opposed to people tormented by the belief that God was punishing or abandoning them — were more likely to want doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive.”
Also,
“They also made fewer preparations for death, such as filling out "do not resuscitate" orders, writing living wills or giving someone power of attorney.... The patients lived a median of about four months after entering the study.”
Their article (JAMA. 2009;301(11):1140-1147) “
Religious Coping and Use of Intensive Life-Prolonging Care Near Death in Patients With Advanced Cancer” appears in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The authors, all from medical facilities in Boston, Massachuseets, U.S.A., are Andrea C. Phelps, Paul K. Maciejewski, Matthew Nilsson, Tracy A. Balboni, Alexi A. Wright, M. Elizabeth PaulkElizabeth Trice, Deborah Schrag, John R. Peteet, Susan D. Block, and Holly G. Prigerson.
They state in the abstract to their paper,
“Patients frequently rely on religious faith to cope with cancer, but little is known about the associations between religious coping and the use of intensive life-prolonging care at the end of life.”
Consequently, the researchers wanted to find out how patients with advanced (terminal) cancer cope religiously with their pending death by the use of
“intensive life-prolonging end-of-life care.”
Page two talks more about the study.
