Pourquoi les décisions de limitation des traitements en réanimation ne sont-elles pas partagées avec les professionnels assurant les soins de l’enfant avant et après la réanimation ?

[Epidemiology and evaluation of withdrawing and withholding of treatment procedure in a pediatric intensive care unit]

OBJECTIVES

Leonetti Law of 2005 concerns procedures for questioning about the appropriateness of initiating or maintaining life-sustaining treatments. Decision of withdrawing and withholding treatment has long been practiced by neonatologists, adult and pediatricians intensivists. In this regard, the recommendations of societies encourage medical teams to assess their practices to improve them. Our evaluation is based on the document of the Ethics Committee of SRLF edited in 2010.

TYPE OF STUDY

We achieved a retrospective evaluation of professional practices of the transcription of our decisions of withdrawing and withholding treatment.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

This study included all children (95 patients) who have had a questioning about life-sustaining treatment of ICU between March 2008 and August 2011 in the pediatric intensive care unit of Children's Hospital of Lyon. Our evaluation is based on the document of the Ethics Committee of French Society of intensive care (SRLF) edited in 2010. We collected epidemiological data on children concerned by questioning about the appropriateness of initiating or maintaining LST and an evaluation of the transcription of our procedures for LST in our folders. Evaluation included 40 cases: 20 folders randomly selected prior an information meeting (January 2011) which were compared with 20 cases occurred consecutively after this information. This meeting was intended to remind recommendations of good practice and principal points of the law. The main assessment measure was the improvement of the practices respecting criteria of the document of the Ethics Committee of SRLF modified for pediatric care.

MAIN RESULTS

Epidemiological data on procedures are comparable to literature data. Concerning the evaluation of our practices before/after a briefing and highlighted a tendency to the improvement without statistically significance. The transcription of reflection and the arguments of decision of withdrawing and withholding treatment and evaluation of pain was the points who need improvement. Finally, despite the positive developments in the therapeutic use of analgesics and sedatives, pain continues to be undervalued.

CONCLUSION

The evaluation of professional practices is recommended to improve the procedures of questioning about life-sustaining treatments have become an area of expertise in intensive care.

Prevalence of questioning regarding life-sustaining treatment and time utilisation by forgoing treatment in francophone PICUs

PURPOSE

Our goal is to assess the prevalence of questioning about the appropriateness of initiating or maintaining life-sustaining treatments (LST) in French-speaking paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and to evaluate time utilisation related to decision-making processes (DMP).

METHODS

18-month, multicentre, prospective, descriptive, observational study in 15 French-speaking PICUs.

RESULTS

Among the 5,602 children admitted, 410 died (7.3%), including 175 after forgoing LST (42.7% of deaths). LST was questioned in 308 children (5.5%) with a prevalence of 13.3 per 100 patient-days. More than 30% of children survived despite the appropriateness of LST being questioned (23% despite a decision to forgo treatment). Median caregiver time spent on making and presenting the decisions was 11 h per child.

CONCLUSIONS

In this study, on any given day in each 10-bed PICU, there was more than one child for whom a DMP was underway. Of children, 23% survived despite a decision to forgo LST being made, which underlines the need to elaborate a care plan for these children. Also, DMP represented a large amount of staff time that is undervalued but necessary to ensure optimal palliative practice in PICU.