Coronary revascularization in diabetic patients: a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The optimal revascularization technique in diabetic patients is an important unresolved question. PURPOSE: To compare long-term outcomes between the revascularization techniques of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). DATA SOURCES: English-language publications in PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Ovid, and EMBASE between 1 January 1990 and 1 June 2014. STUDY SELECTION: Two investigators independently reviewed randomized, controlled trials comparing PCI (with drug-eluting or bare-metal stents) with CABG in adults with diabetes with multivessel or left main coronary artery disease. DATA EXTRACTION: Study design, quality, patient characteristics, length of follow-up, and outcomes were extracted. For duplicate publications, outcomes were obtained from the publication with the longest follow-up. DATA SYNTHESIS: 40 studies were combined using a Bayesian network meta-analysis that accounted for the variation in stent choice. The primary outcome, a composite of all-cause mortality, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and stroke, increased with PCI (odds ratio [OR], 1.33 [95% credible interval {CrI}, 1.01 to 1.65]). Percutaneous coronary intervention resulted in increased mortality (OR, 1.44 [CrI, 1.05 to 1.91]), no change in the number of myocardial infarctions (OR, 1.33 [CrI, 0.86 to 1.95]), and fewer strokes (OR, 0.56 [CrI, 0.36 to 0.88]). LIMITATIONS: Study design and length of follow-up were heterogeneous, and results were driven primarily by a single study. Costs and nonvascular complications of the interventions were not examined. CONCLUSION: Coronary artery bypass grafting seems to be the preferred revascularization technique in diabetics, especially if long-term survival is anticipated. However, because of residual uncertainties and increased risk for stroke with CABG, clinical judgment is required when choosing a revascularization technique in patients with diabetes. PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: Fonds de recherche du Québec-Santé.

Your morality, my mortality: conscientious objection and the standard of care.

Recently the scope of protections afforded those healthcare professionals and institutions that refuse to provide certain interventions on the grounds of conscience have expanded, in some instances insulating providers (institutional and individual) from any liability or sanction for harms that patients experience as a result. With the exponential increase in the penetration of Catholic-affiliated healthcare across the country, physicians and nurses who are not practicing Catholics are nevertheless required to execute documents pledging to conform their patient care to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services as a condition of employment or medical staff privileges. In some instances, doing so may result in patient morbidity or mortality or violate professional standards for respecting advance directives or surrogate decisionmaking. This article challenges the ethical propriety of such institutional mandates and argues that legal protections for conscientious refusal must provide redress for patients who are harmed by care that falls below the prevailing clinical standards.

Prognosis terminal: truth-telling in the context of end-of-life care.

Recent contributions to the medical literature have raised yet again the issue of whether the term "terminal" is an intelligible one and whether there is a consensus view of its meaning that is sufficient to justify or even require its use in discussing end-of-life care and treatment options with patients. Following a review of the history and development of informed consent, persistent problems with the communication of prognosis and the breaking of bad news are analyzed. The author argues that candid but compassionate communication between physicians and patients about prognosis is essential to informed decisions about both disease-directed (curative) and palliative therapies.

Pathologizing suffering and the pursuit of a peaceful death.

The specialty of psychiatry has a long-standing, virtually monolithic view that a desire to die, even a desire for a hastened death among the terminally ill, is a manifestation of mental illness. Recently, psychiatry has made significant inroads into hospice and palliative care, and in doing so brings with it the conviction that dying patients who seek to end their suffering by asserting control over the time and manner of their inevitable death should be provided with psychotherapeutic measures rather than having their expressed wishes respected as though their desire for an earlier death were the rational choice of someone with decisional capacity. This article reviews and critiques this approach from the perspective of recent clinical data indicating that patients who secure and utilize a lethal prescription are generally exercising an autonomous choice unencumbered by clinical depression or other forms of incapacitating mental illness.

Prescription opioid forgery: reporting to law enforcement and protection of medical information.

OBJECTIVE: To review confidentiality requirements of prescribers who become aware of a forged prescription. DESIGN: A case is reviewed in which a prescriber believes that a prescription has been forged. RESULTS: The literature and law related to prescription forgery and confidentiality are reviewed. Although prescription forgery is a crime, the prescriber's responsibility for reporting to law enforcement is not clear under current state and federal law. Federal laws and regulations, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), do not permit prescribers in all circumstances to disclose prescription fraud to law enforcement. CONCLUSIONS: Under common circumstances, HIPAA may prohibit prescribers from reporting prescription forgery to law enforcement. However, collaborating with a dispensing pharmacist may offer a lawful pathway to reporting prescription forgery. State legislature may consider laws that clarify the reporting responsibilities of prescribers in cases of prescription forgery.

A review of forensic implications of opioid prescribing with examples from malpractice cases involving opioid-related overdose.

OBJECTIVE: To provide a forensic overview and trace common threads among malpractice lawsuits involving patients who overdosed while consuming therapeutic opioids. METHODS: One of us (LRW) reviewed 35 medical records of patients with chronic pain who overdosed, 20 of them fatally, while consuming therapeutic opioids, leading to lawsuits against physicians for malpractice. The reviews were requested by plaintiff and defense attorneys from across the United States from 2005 to 2009 to ascertain which drug(s) were primarily responsible for each death and whether the death was due to physician error, patient nonadherence, or some other reason. Complaints against pharmaceutical companies were excluded. Cases were examined for common trends, and comment is offered. RESULTS: Methadone was responsible for the most deaths at 10 (50%), and hydrocodone was second at four deaths (20%) The most common risk factors found in the medical records of decedents included prescriber error in initiating, converting or titrating doses, patient nonadherence to medical instruction, presence of comorbid mental disorders, toxicological presence of benzodiazepines, middle age, and unrelieved pain. This article focuses on examples of physician errors and how they can be prevented. CONCLUSIONS: Common trends emerge from medical records of opioid decedents. Patient actions con-tribute, but physician error, particularly regarding prescribing methadone for pain, is apparent as well. A focused effort to determine the types and causes of common physician errors and how they might be avoided may lead to safer, more effective clinical interventions in the management of pain.

Intractable end-of-life suffering and the ethics of palliative sedation.

Palliative sedation (sedation to unconsciousness) as an option of last resort for intractable end-of-life distress has been the subject of ongoing discussion and debate as well as policy formulation. A particularly contentious issue has been whether some dying patients experience a form of intractable suffering not marked by physical symptoms that can reasonably be characterized as "existential" in nature and therefore not an acceptable indication for palliative sedation. Such is the position recently taken by the American Medical Association. In this essay we argue that such a stance reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human suffering, particularly at the end of life, and may deprive some dying patients of an effective means of relieving their intractable terminal distress.

Gonzales versus Oregon:the Oregon Death with Dignity Act Meets the Controlled Substances Act.

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Oregon represents the most recent battle in a long war of attrition waged by the opponents of the practice of physician-assisted suicide in general and the Oregon Death with Dignity Act in particular. The history of the Oregon law and the many challenges to it provide pertinent background to understanding important elements of the majority and dissenting opinions in this case and suggest where this seemingly intractable societal debate may be headed.