End-of-Life Decisions in Dutch Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Objective: To clarify the practice of end-of-life decision making in severely ill newborns. Design: Retrospective descriptive study with face-to-face interviews. Setting: The 10 neonatal intensive care units in the Netherlands from October 2005 to September 2006. Patients: All 367 newborn infants who died in the first 2 months of life in Dutch neonatal intensive care units. Adequate documentation was available in 359 deaths. Outcome Measures: Presence of end-of-life decisions, classification of deaths in 3 groups, and physicians' considerations leading to end-of-life decisions. Results: An end... Mehr ...