By Randi Belisomo (Reuters Health) – If you have an advance directive that cherry-picks the interventions you want to receive if your heart suddenly stops, you might want to rethink your choices, according to physicians writing in JAMA Internal Medicine. People who prepare for the possibility of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by specifying selected options – “everything but intubation” or “everything but defibrillation” – don’t realize what that can mean, they warn. Dr. Paul Rousseau of the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina describes a 77-year-old man with advanced cancer whose “code status” – that is, the orders in his chart for how he was to be managed if his heart stopped – called for a “partial” code, with “no intubation.” So while doctors were able to restart his heart, they couldn’t place a breathing tube in his lungs per his written wish.
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Opting for CPR but not intubation may not be wise