Advance Directives Are Usually Followed

March 31, 2010 -- Advance directives, which describe the medical care you
want to have if you're incapacitated, are honored most of the time, a study
shows.
''If you take time out to put together a living will or durable power of
attorney for health care, most often you get your wishes," says study
researcher Maria J. Silveira, MD, MPH, a  clinician scientist at the Ann
Arbor VA Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine, University of
Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor.
The study is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The results of her new study, Silveira concludes, support the continued use
of advance directives.
There are two types of advance directives: a living will or a medical power
of attorney, also known as a health care proxy. A living will informs your
doctor and your family about the type of treatment you'd want to receive if you
are unable to make your own medical decisions. A medical power of attorney
assigns a person -- called a health care proxy -- to make the decisions for
you.
Advance directives became more common after the passage of the Patient
Self-Determination Act in the U.S. 20 years ago, but debate about the
usefulness of the documents has been ongoing for several years, Silveira tells
WebMD.
During the recent health care reform debate, a proposal to pay back health
care providers for advance directives planning discussions through Medicare
sparked controversy, raising concern that these advance directives would result
in denial of necessary care, Silveira says.
Honoring Advance Directives
Silveira and her colleagues used data from the Health and Retirement study,
a nationally representative group of U.S. adults age 51 and older, taken every
two years.
They looked just at people 60 and older who had died between 2000 and 2006,
asking a family member or other informed person to answer questions about
circumstances and decisions after the participant's death, usually within 24
months of the death.
Among the 3,746 people 60 and above who died, 42.5% had to make treatment
choices and 70.3% of those did not have the ability to decide for
themselves.
One surprise: 67.3% of those who lacked decision-making ability had advance
directives -- either a living will, health care proxy, or both.
So were their wishes followed?
''What we found was, the agreement depended on what the patient wanted,"
Silveira tells WebMD.  "Almost everyone who wanted comfort care got it."
If they asked for limited care -- not the most aggressive but beyond comfort
care -- 83.2% got it, she found.
Only half of the 10 people who requested ''all care possible,'' the most
aggressive approach, got it. But Silveira says that was sometimes because ''all
care possible'' couldn't be given.
http://www .webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20100331/advance-directives-are-usually-followed?src=RSS_PUBLIC