Word: treatment
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...view the judicial resolution of this most difficult and awesome question--whether potentially life-prolonging treatment should be withheld from a person incapable of making his own decision--as constituting a 'gratuitous encroachment' on the domain of medical expertise. Rather, such questions of life and death seem to us to require the process of detached but passionate investigation, and decision that forms the ideal on which the judicial branch of government was created. Achieving this ideal is our reponsibility and that of the lower court, and is not to be entrusted to any other group purporting to represent the 'morality...
...first time tackling the question, "Who, if anyone, should pull the plug?" In the case of an incompetent patient--such as the very young, the unconscious, or the mentally retarded--who should take on the awesome responsibility of deciding whether to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment...
...patient could conceivably need. In part, that is done to reassure patients or to protect themselves against malpractice suits. Says Dr. E. Kash Rose, senior radiologist at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa, Calif.: "One study showed that 80% of skull X rays were unnecessary for care and treatment of patients. Rib X rays are done purely for the mental relief of the patient rather than for medical reasons. The treatment is exactly the same" whether the X ray discloses a fracture...
...diagnosis of why medical costs are shooting up is reasonably clear, the course of treatment that could bring those costs under control is anything but clear. It is easy
...lifesaving remedy, though not a cure. Thrice weekly, patients with kidney failure get hooked up to a machine that filters toxic body wastes from the blood. The technique works, no question; the problem is money: about $25,000 a year in special centers, about half that if the treatment can be performed at home. Since 1973, the government has picked up the tab for dialysis (as well as for kidney transplant operations). The program now covers some 44,000 patients at an annual cost of more than $1 billion. By the 1980s the projection is 60,000 patients...