Photo of the Week - A Novel Way to Express End-of-Life Preferences

This license plate takes the concept of a DNR tattoo to the next level. My only question is, if the car battery dies, do you attempt to jump start it?

A big thanks to Priscilla for the photo!

by: Eric Widera (@ewidera)

Comments

judygold said…

Do the DNI / DNR instructions apply to only the driver? Or do the instructions extend to all the passengers?

August 20, 2012 at 9:16 PM

Dying without Dialysis

There is a terrific article in this weeks Journal of Pain and Symptom Management by Fliss Murtagh of King's College in London about the epidemiology of symptoms for patients with advanced renal failure who die without dialysis. This study is important because while we know that patients with advanced renal failure have a limited life expectancy and the average age of initiation of hemodialysis is increasing, we know little about the alternatives to hemodialysis. Specifically, we know nothing about symptoms affecting quality of life among patients who elect not to start dialysis (so called "conservative management" - is this the best label?). This article provides a terrific counterpoint to the article in last years NEJM showing that nursing home residents who initiated hemodialysis tended to die and decline in function (see GeriPal write up here).

The study authors followed patients with the most advanced form of chronic kidney disease (the new name for renal failu…

Language Matters: Podcast with Brian Block and Anna DeForest

One of our first GeriPal posts was titled "Rant on Terminology," by Patrice Villars, NP. In the spirit of looking back over our first 10 years, here is the opening paragraph to that post:

News Headlines read: Sen. Edward Kennedy loses battle with cancer. Really, he lost? I thought he died from a malignant brain tumor, an “aggressive” brain tumor. The median survival is less than a year for people for his particular tumor. Kennedy was diagnosed in May of 2008. He lived over 15 months after diagnosis. What a loser. He must not have fought hard enough. Huh? I thought he spent most of his life battling for social and health care reform in America. In this week's GeriPal podcast we take a deeper dive into this issue of language and medicine. We are joined by guests Anna DeForest, MD, MFA, a resident in Neurology at Yale, and Brian Block, MD, a pulmonary critical care fellow at UCSF.

Anna recently published a paper in the NEJM describing her reaction to hearing terms like, &…

The Dangers of Fleet Enemas

The dangers of oral sodium phosphate preparations are fairly well known in the medical community. In 2006 the FDA issued it’s first warning that patients taking oral sodium phosphate preparations are at risk for potential for acute kidney injury. Two years later, over-the-counter preparations of these drugs were voluntarily withdrawn by the manufacturers. Those agents still available by prescription were given black box warnings mainly due to acute phosphate nephropathy that can result in renal failure, especially in older adults. Despite all this talk of oral preparations, little was mentioned about a sodium phosphate preparation that is still available over-the-counter – the Fleet enema.

Why Oral Sodium Phosphate Preparations Are Dangerous

Before we go into the risks of Fleet enemas, lets spend just a couple sentences on why oral sodium phosphate preparations carry significant risks. First, oral sodium phosphate preparations can cause significant fluid shifts within the colon …

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