Researchers from King’s College London’s Cicely Saunders Institute have published a new study in BMC Medicine. They studied a national data set of all deaths from two common groups of respiratory diseases - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Interstitial Pulmonary Diseases (IPD), covering 380,232 people over 14 years. The report found that hospital deaths from COPD and IPD fell by 3-6% in the eight years following the introduction of the End of Life Care Strategy.
This study shows what a lottery emergency care can be if you haven't made your wishes known in advance. How you are treated should have nothing to do with wealth, location or what disease you have. Modern societies should do what they can to honour the health care preferences values and goals of every individual.
