Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year | Mail Online
21/06/12 8:46 AM
Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off
130,000 elderly patients every year
Professor says doctors use 'death pathway' to euthenasia of the elderly
Treatment on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours
Around 29 per cent of patients that die in hospital are on controversial 'care
pathway'
Pensioner admitted to hospital given treatment by doctor on weekend shift
By Steve Doughty
PUBLISHED: 23:08 GMT, 19 June 2012 | UPDATED: 13:20 GMT, 21 June 2012
Worrying claim: Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a
controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult
to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.
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Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year | Mail Online
21/06/12 8:46 AM
Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent
of euthanasia of the elderly.
He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking
after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.
It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is
imminent.
It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on
average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around
29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP.
Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it
had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.
Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a patient off the LCP who went on to be
successfully treated.
He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are ‘palpably false’.
In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy
was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend shift.
Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to find the patient unresponsive and his family
upset because they had not agreed to place him on the LCP.
‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,’ he said.
‘His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family,’ he said.
Professor Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at
the University of Kent, was speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine in London.
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Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year | Mail Online
21/06/12 8:46 AM
Distressing: The professor has claimed an approved technique of looking after the
terminally ill is not being used in all hospitals
He said: ‘The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway
rather than a care pathway.
‘Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP.
‘Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition.
‘Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible
scientifically.
This determination in the LCP leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal views of the physician or other
medical team members of perceived quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in
putting a patient on the LCP.’
He added: ‘If we accept the Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that euthanasia is part of the standard way of
dying as it is now associated with 29 per cent of NHS deaths.’
The LCP was developed in the North West during the 1990s and recommended to hospitals by the National
Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in 2004.
Medical criticisms of the Liverpool Care Pathway were voiced nearly three years ago.
Experts including Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at the University of London, and Dr Peter
Hargreaves, palliative care consultant at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, Surrey, warned of ‘backdoor
euthanasia’ and the risk that economic factors were being brought into the treatment of vulnerable patients.
In the example of the 71-year-old, Professor Pullicino revealed he had given the patient another 14 months of life
by demanding the man be removed from the LCP.
Professor Pullicino said the patient was an Italian who spoke poor English, but was living with a ‘supportive wife
and daughter’. He had a history of cerebral haemorrhage and subsequent seizures.
Professor Pullicino said: ‘I found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday morning and was told he had been put
on the LCP. He was on morphine via a syringe driver.’ He added: ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite
significant resistance.’
The patient’s extra 14 months of life came at considerable cost to the NHS and the taxpayer, Professor Pullicino
indicated.
He said he needed extensive support with wheelchair, ramps and nursing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html?ITO=1490
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Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year | Mail Online
21/06/12 8:46 AM
After 14 months the patient was admitted to a different hospital with pneumonia and put on the LCP. The man
died five hours later.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway is not euthanasia and we do not
recognise these figures. The pathway is recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians –
at home and abroad – including the Royal College of Physicians.
‘A patient’s condition is monitored at least every four hours and, if a patient improves, they are taken off the
Liverpool Care Pathway and given whatever treatments best suit their new needs.’
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Comments (450)
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Is >Not Cruel to end life when in great Pain etc, Dogs Die with more dignity than many humans?
- Carl Barron, Christchurch, Dorset, 21/6/2012 15:06
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Rating 12
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If I was elderly I think I would take my chances recouperating (or not) at home rather than go in and have some doctor or panel
decide that my life is no longer wrth living and to kill me!
- pateriot, Grand Rapids, Mi USA, 21/6/2012 14:50
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Rating 16
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BTW, those in favor of Obamacare, would recommend you use some empathy.Try putting yourself in a hospital bed, or your mother,
father, wanting every chance to live but some low level, government lackey has authority to decide if what treatment your doc is
allowed to give you.If your doc with years experience,disagrees and treats you appropriately, that doc is fined $100,000. If he
disobeys again, he faces jail time and neither you nor your doctor have ANY recourse. This IS Obamacare, and why approx 40% of
our doctors will leave their profession rather than practice under this new law. If the numbers are correct and as many as 30 million
more people will be in the health care system (and yes, that includes illegals), the American people will absolutely have severe
health care rationing including those who have worked and contributed to their nation all their lives.Our healthcare not perfect but I
assure you,better than OC offers.
- JudyJ RN, Ridge, NY, 21/6/2012 13:15
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Rating 21
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As an RN, I can NOT in good conscience practice under Obamacare. I took an oath,
- JudyJ RN, Ridge, NY, 21/6/2012 13:03
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Rating 20
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Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year | Mail Online
21/06/12 8:46 AM
This is happening in the US too. So-called
- Michael Rizzio, Corpus Christi TX, 21/6/2012 12:15
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DOCTORS BURY THEIR MISTAKES
- sandra hemsworth, coogee, australia, 21/6/2012 11:50
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My fathers been in hopital for over 3 weeks now, he's 77 the care was absolutly rubbish. The ward doctor wants to discharge him but
his heart doctor needs further checks to be done on him. At one point you can almost hear the arguments between the 2 doctors.
There's clearly something that has shown up on a scan so the heart doctor isn't happy to release him. They are only interested in
freeing up beds. Before he was admitted this time round he went into hospital only to be discharged after few days, his condition got
worse, he was readmitted by his GL only to be told there is no beds. Had to wait for 5 hours before a bed could be found. My fathers
paid his taxes all his life and now he cant even get the basic needs in hospital. Its a disgrace I hope people take to the street...
- Lin, Luton, 21/6/2012 10:03
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Rating 31
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Professor Patrick Pullicino has been brave to expose this horrendous abuse of elderly patients. The UK medical and political
establishment has a long history of'hounding and vilifying any NHS 'whistleblowers'. Death from withdrawal of food and fluids can be
horrific, as relatives have testified. It can be slow and very inhumane; the 'lucky ones' die quickly from heart failure caused by
dehydration. In the UK it is a crime to kill a dog in this manner.
- Jenny Allan, Scotland, 21/6/2012 08:59
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Rating 33
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While what we have the US has its downsides(It is expensive, and the uninsured often end up in ERs at taxpayer expense), this is
exactly why single payer is what we don't need. Both the US and the UK would be better off with a system similar to that in countries
like Germany and Japan. Multi-payer healthcare strikes the right balance of regulation and free enterprise. - Kate, Middletown, USA,
21/6/2012 05:24 Kate, I am living with your healthcare system and it is truly appalling - money first and the person last! It's expensive
because HUGE profits go into the pockets of the insurance companies, rather than to support healthcare. Perhaps if this money was
used differently, you wouldn't feel so resentful about the taxpayer saving someone's life!
- Caz. Ex-Pat, LA USA, 21/6/2012 06:43
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A lot of the people posting here use phrases like
- Stephanie, San Diego, USA, 21/6/2012 06:02
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