[Emergency care management of patients with cancer at the final stage of disease--seven cases].
Anasthesiologie, Intensivmedizin, Notfallmedizin, Schmerztherapie · 2008-07-01 · Case report
Abstract
The care of patients with cancer disease in the final stage amounts to 2.5% of all emergency-medical applications. This corresponded to the number of pediatric emergency cases. For this every emergency physician can be involved in the care of those patients. Emergency physicians may allow adapted treatment in the will or supposed will of the patient always. Therefore it is necessary to know special legal bearings of the case. We analysed seven emergency cases with patients in the final stage of their cancer disease retrospectively. For this we present seven different emergency cases with different regulatory framework for each emergency physician. The cases have shown seven possible care concepts of patients in the final stage of a cancer disease. All patients could be categorised as palliative ones. Nevertheless, the emergency physicians were alarmed by the patients' relatives because of needing professional help at the moment. The differences of the cases appeared in the regulatory framework. The seven cases have shown that different legal meanings could be important in emergency therapy of palliative patients.