The New England journal of medicine
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In addition to medical care, dying patients often need many types of assistance, including help with transportation, nursing care, homemaking services, and personal care. We interviewed terminally ill adults and their care givers in six randomly selected areas of the United States (five metropolitan areas and one rural county) to determine how their needs for assistance were met and the frequency with which they received such assistance from family members and paid and volunteer care givers. ⋯ In our survey of terminally ill patients, family members, usually women, provided the majority of assistance with nonmedical care. Although many people received assistance from paid care givers, very few had assistance from volunteers.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Amiodarone for resuscitation after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation.
Whether antiarrhythmic drugs improve the rate of successful resuscitation after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has not been determined in randomized clinical trials. ⋯ In patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest due to refractory ventricular arrhythmias, treatment with amiodarone resulted in a higher rate of survival to hospital admission. Whether this benefit extends to survival to discharge from the hospital merits further investigation.