OBJECTIVES Ethical issues have recently been raised regarding the appropriate care of patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS) in Japan. The purpose of our study is to study the attitudes and beliefs of Japanese physicians who have experience caring for patients in PVS. DESIGN AND SETTING A postal questionnaire was sent to all 317 representative members of the Japan Society of Apoplexy w...

The decision to limit or withdraw life-support treatment is an integral part of the job of a physician working in the intensive care unit, and of the approach to care. However, this decision is influenced by a number of factors. It is widely accepted that a medical decision that will ultimate lead to end-of-life in the intensive care unit (ICU) must be shared between all those involved in the c...

Successful retention of students through understanding their motivations and behaviours is a challenge to universities worldwide. Whilst the impact withdrawals an issue for all institutions, attrition distance-learning providers particularly problematic owing higher non-completion rates, less physical visibility, because distance-learners tend have more complex lives. This paper examines studen...

This results in this paper have been merged with the result in arXiv:1003.0167. The authors would like to withdraw this version. Please see arXiv:1008.5356 for the merged version.

With the development of increasingly potent new immunosuppressive agents, the outcomes after renal transplantation have continued to improve. However, patients continue to require long term chronic immunosuppression. The toxicities associated with cyclosporine, azathioprine, prednisone, and anti-lymphocyte antibodies are well known; those associated with the newer agents, tacrolimus, mycophenol...

Recent research links first-person plural pronoun use (we-talk) by individual romantic partners to adaptive relationship functioning and individual health outcomes. To examine a possible boundary condition of adaptive we-talk in couples coping with health problems, we correlated asymmetric couple-level we/I-ratios (more we-talk relative to I-talk by the spouse than the patient) with a concurren...

BACKGROUND The treatment of breast cancer tends to result in physical side effects (e.g., vaginal dryness, stomatitis, and atrophy) that can cause sexual problems. Although studies of early-stage breast cancer have demonstrated that sexual problems are associated with increased depressive symptoms for both patients and their partners, comparatively little is known about these associations in me...

BACKGROUND Few studies have looked at how decisions are made to withhold or to withdraw potentially life-sustaining treatments (LST) in paediatric nephrology. The aim of this work was to evaluate such practices in all nephrology centres in French-speaking European countries, so that guidelines could be discussed and drawn up by professionals. METHODS We used semi-directed interviews to questi...

Among end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on hemodialysis, death from withdrawal from life-sustaining dialysis is increasingly common. The present study's objective was to examine depression as a potential risk factor for hemodialysis withdrawal. Two hundred forty ESRD hemodialysis (133 male and 107 female) patients were followed for an average of 4 years after depression symptom assessment...