A new national study has found that advanced dementia patients receiving a feeding tube has dropped more than 50%. It is becoming less controversial for surrogate decision makers to decline tube feeding and rely on hand feeding. Now, families and physicians are beginning to understand the negative effects of feeding tubes for those patients with the terminal disease. Feeding tubes do not keep dementia patients alive longer, and they cut out the needed social interaction of hand feeding. Today, more and more terminally ill patients are focusing on end-of-life quality rather than just being kept alive.
See Paula Span, The Decline of Tube Feeding for Dementia Patients, NY Times, August 29, 2016.
Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) & Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.
