Letter

Artificially giving nutrition and fluids is not one action

BMJ 2003; 326 doi: 10.1136/bmj.326.7391.713/a (Published 29 March 2003)
Cite this as: BMJ 2003;326:713.2

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

  1. Thomas Finucane, professor of medicine (tfinucan@jhmi.edu),
  2. Colleen Christmas, assistant professor of medicine
  1. Johns Hopkins Geriatric Center, 5505 Hopkins Bayview Circle, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA

    EDITOR—The and colleagues' description of decision making for patients with severe dementia who have difficulties in eating and drinking, raises several troubling issues.1

    Firstly, they implicitly consider tube feeding to be life sustaining. In fact, no credible data show that tube feeding prolongs life in advanced dementia.2–5 An honest summary of the data is, “We have no good evidence …

    Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment

    Subscribe

    Article access

    Article access for 1 day

    Purchase this article for £20 $30 €32*

    The PDF version can be downloaded as your personal record

    * Prices do not include VAT

    Rapid responses

    THIS WEEK'S POLL

    BMJ most popular