Unit:
Κατεύθυνση Επείγουσα ΝοσηλευτικήLibrary of the School of Health Sciences
Author:
Balaskas Georgios
Supervisors info:
Χριστίνα Μαρβάκη, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Νοσηλευτικής, ΠΑΔΑ
Αναστασία Κοτανίδου, Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Γεωργία Τουλιά, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Νοσηλευτικής, ΠΑΔΑ
Original Title:
Διασωληνώσεις ασθενών-Ποιότητα και προοπτική στην παράταση της ζωής-Αξιοπρεπής θάνατος
Translated title:
Patient intubations-Quality and perspective in prolonging life-Death with dignity
Summary:
INTRODUCTION
The end of every man is the epilogue that will complete the "book" of his life. The last image he will leave to the world he is saying goodbye to.
These moments deserve the respect of friends, relatives and especially health professionals who are supposed to relieve, ease the pain and accept the cycle of life. Most of the time, these happen in a health facility, hospital and the ethical rules that govern patient care are passed through European and Greek legislation. The human body has rights and deserves decent treatment. Nevertheless, the context in which health professionals operate is not so clear and dilemmas are created regarding the intubation or not of the dying patient.
AIM
The aim of the work was to prove that intubation does not help in the case of elderly dying patients, but on the contrary it suffers and reduces the days of survival of those hospitalized outside the ICU.
MATERIAL AND METHOD
A retrospective, comparative registry study was performed. The data were collected from the admission and discharge books of the Covid-19 department of a large hospital in Athens, information from the ICUs and the electronic files of the patients, in the year 2022. The sample consists of 183 patients, 99 men and 84 women from 70 to 101 years old who were euthanized or intubated. The research question was whether intubation prolongs the life time of elderly patients, particularly when they are not going to be transferred to an ICU. The statistical analysis of the data was done using the SPSS statistical program.
RESULTS
The 102 patients who were not intubated finished after 10.10 days of total hospitalization. The 54 intubated patients who stayed out of the ICU ended up after 7.19 days of total hospitalization. Of the 27 intubated patients transferred to the ICU, 19 survived a total of 14.58 days.
CONCLUSIONS
The argument that intubation prolongs the survival time of patients in the category covered by this study, is not valid for patients who will not be admitted to the ICU. Those who were not intubated survived 2.91 days longer, despite being 5.74 years older than those intubated. But also for those who were admitted to the ICU, life was not prolonged but the process of death, according to the opinion of Atul Gawande2.
Main subject category:
Health Sciences
Keywords:
Patients' rights, Health ethics, End-of-life care, Intubation, Respect for wishes
File:
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Balaskas_Georgios_MSc.pdf
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File access is restricted only to the intranet of UoA.
