Abstract

End-of-life practices in German palliative careWe know that end-of-life practices in medicine vary widely across countries. The paper by Schildman et al reports a questionnaire survey of all members of the German Society for Palliative Medicine using the German language version of the EURELD survey instrument. 1 The study has a good response rate of 55.8% and finds that decisions to withdraw or withhold treatment are very common, but that German physicians estimate that the life-shortening effects of most of these decisions are very limited, although in 17 of 234 cases the life-shortening effect was estimated to be more than 1 month. Extended cognition and end-of-life care for patients with dementiaAnother interesting and somewhat provocative paper in this issue also discusses end-of-life issues, in this case decision making for …