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- Published on: 2 January 2018
- Published on: 28 December 2017
- Published on: 2 January 2018How do you define voluntarily stopping eating and drinking?
Dear Editor
In this issue, Shinjo et al reported that, among Japanese home hospice physicians and palliative care specialists, 32% replied that they had experience in caring for patients who had voluntarily stopped eating and drinking (VSED). 1 Their mean years of clinical experience overall, and in the field of palliative medicine, were 26 years and 13 years, respectively. According to the authors, Japanese patients were also trying to implement VSED to hasten their deaths themselves.We congratulate the authors on publishing this very important epidemiologic data in Japan. As the authors point out, the study is limited by both recall and social desirability biases, which could explain some inaccuracy in their survey results. Moreover, we wonder whether the way in which VSED was defined in this study also contributed to the relatively high prevalence of physicians who had experience with this practice.
In their questionnaire, VSED was defined as “terminal ill patients electing to stop taking water and nutrition despite the fact that they do not suffer from a difficulty in oral intake such as gastrointestinal obstruction or cachexia”. VSED is an under-recognized practice and there are few data available. Especially in Japan, as they reported, only half of the palliative care physicians were aware of VSED. While their definition was not inaccurate, it is possible that this definition failed to convey the gravity of VSED and, as a result, physicians...
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None declared. - Published on: 28 December 2017A comment to Shinjo T et al.: collusion in VSED
Letter to the Editor
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Shinjo et al. recently surveyed Japanese home hospice and palliative care physicians’ with regard to their experiences of caring for patients who voluntarily stop eating and drinking (VSED) in order to hasten death and questioned their opinion towards continuous deep sedation (CDS) as a mean to relieve patients’ refractory symptoms during VSED (1). According to the authors, attitudes of non-acceptance of CDS in VSED (36%) may have been related to the opinion that the use of sedatives during VSED was commensurate with euthanasia. Compared to Dutch family physicians - of whom an overwhelming majority endorsed CDS in VSDE -, acceptance was rather low among Japanese physicians (15%), and the authors evoke that physicians may face a « moral conflict in respecting the patient’s self-determination and allowing patient suicide ».
While we value the authors’ contribution to this clinically relevant topic, we would like to complete their point of view with regard to the possible underlying reasons of the physicians’ attitudes. Indeed, ethical elements may play a role, but psychological dynamics may also have influenced their stance. We have previously raised attention to the existence of collusions in end-of-life care (2). Collusion, an unconscious dynamic between patients and caregivers, occurs in situations which reflect an unresolved psychological issue shared by the involved persons; it may provoke strong emotions and unreflected behaviour (3). F...Conflict of Interest:
None declared.