End-of-Life Care Found More Important than Longevity

A new study has found that most people would be willing to trade a longer life for better care at the end of life. The findings were reported in the May 2004 issue of Medical Care.

Researchers interviewed a sampling of 104 subjects who took a survey based on six scenarios involving an 80-year-old man who died after a one-month stay in an intensive care unit (ICU). On average, interviewees were willing to trade seven months of mortality just to ensure better quality of life in the final month of life.

"The results were overwhelming, as 75% said they would trade some amount of healthy life to improve the quality of end-of-life care,” said lead author Cindy L. Bryce, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and a researcher at the Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh (PA, USA).

Quantifying the value of end-of-life care can help healthcare workers prioritize care when resources are limited, according to Dr. Bryce. Efforts to set healthcare priorities might include a cost-effectiveness analysis, which compares the costs and benefits of various healthcare services to determine which ones provide the most benefit relative to their costs.

"We need to develop the right kind of measurement tools because it's not enough to simply say ‘x, y, and z' are all important, which has always been true of all kinds of health services. Out study begins to assess how important ‘x, y, and z' are,” explained Dr. Bryce.