Limitation and withdrawal of intensive therapy at the end of life: practices in intensive care units in Mumbai, India

Abstract

Objective: To describe the practices in intensive care units in Mumbai hospitals regarding limitation and withdrawal of care at the end of life.

Design: Review of prospectively collected data.

Settings: Intensive care units of four major hospitals (two private tertiary referral general hospitals, one mixed public and private cancer referral hospital, and one large public hospital).

Patients: Hospital and intensive care unit patients who died during the study period.

Intervention: None.

Measurements and main results: We measured the percentage of hospital deaths occurring inside and outside intensive care units and the incidence of withholding intubation, withholding other therapy, and withdrawing therapy for deaths in the intensive care unit. The proportion of hospital deaths that occurred in an intensive care unit was 14% in the cancer hospital, 23% in the public hospital, and 58-73% in the two private hospitals (chi-square test for trends, p < .0001). Of the 143 deaths that occurred in intensive care unit, limitation of care occurred in 49 patients. Twenty-five percent of these patients were not intubated terminally, 67% were initially intubated and ventilated but failed to recover and subsequently had no further escalation of therapy, and 8% had withdrawal of therapy. Therapy was limited in 19% of deaths in the public hospital intensive care unit (odds ratio, 0.44; 95% confidence interval, 0.2-0.97) vs. 40%, 41%, and 50% of deaths in the other three intensive care units.

Conclusions: Therapy is limited in a significant proportion of intensive care unit patients. Significant differences in the practice of limitation of therapy exist between public and private hospitals. Lack of access to a limited number of intensive care unit beds, especially in the public hospital, may constitute implicit limitation of care.