Doctors” Preferences for Their Own End-of-Life Care? No Life-Sustaining Practices

FRIDAY, June 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Many physicians would personally prefer to avoid life-sustaining practices if they had advanced cancer or Alzheimer disease, according to a study published online June 10 in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Sarah Mroz, M.P.H., from the End-of-Life Care Research Group in Brussels, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional survey in eight jurisdictions to examine physicians” personal preferences for end-of-life practices. A total of 1,157 survey responses from general practitioners, palliative care physicians, and other medical specialists were analyzed.

The researchers found that in advanced cancer and Alzheimer disease, respectively, physicians rarely considered life-sustaining practices a good or very good option (cardiopulmonary resuscitation, 0.5 and 0.2 percent; mechanical ventilation, 0.8 and 0.3 percent; tube feeding, 3.5 and 3.8 percent); euthanasia was considered a good or very good option by about half of physicians (54.2 percent for cancer and 51.5 percent for Alzheimer disease). The proportion of physicians considering euthanasia a good or very good option varied from 37.9 to 80.8 percent in Italy and Belgium, respectively, in the cancer scenario, and from 37.4 to 67.4 percent in Georgia, USA, and Belgium, respectively, in the Alzheimer disease scenario. The likelihood of considering euthanasia a good or very good option for both cancer and Alzheimer disease was higher for physicians practicing in a jurisdiction with a legal option for both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (odds ratios, 3.1 for cancer and 1.9 for Alzheimer disease).

“It is striking that many physicians would also consider euthanasia in the Alzheimer”s disease scenario, despite the progressive status of this disease making it a complex basis for a competent assisted dying request. In most jurisdictions, the law would not allow physicians to grant this request,” the authors write.

Abstract/Full Text