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Life-sustaining treatment and palliative care in patients with liver cirrhosis - legal, ethical, and practical issues

Clinical and Molecular Hepatology 2017;23(2):115-122.
Published online: May 2, 2017

1Department of Internal Medicine, Hallym University College of Medicine, Chuncheon, Korea

2Department of Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Corresponding author : Dong Joon Kim Center for Liver and Digestive Diseases, Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital, 77 Sakju-ro, Chuncheon 24253, Korea Tel: +82-33-240-5646, Fax: +82-33-241-8064 E-mail: djkim@hallym.ac.kr
• Received: March 17, 2017   • Accepted: March 29, 2017

Copyright © 2017 by The Korean Association for the Study of the Liver

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Life-sustaining treatment and palliative care in patients with liver cirrhosis - legal, ethical, and practical issues
Clin Mol Hepatol. 2017;23(2):115-122.   Published online May 2, 2017
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Clin Mol Hepatol. 2017;23(2):115-122.   Published online May 2, 2017
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Life-sustaining treatment and palliative care in patients with liver cirrhosis - legal, ethical, and practical issues
Image Image
Figure 1. Conceptual frame of disease-modifying treatment, palliative care, and hospice.
Figure 2. Distribution of adults in need of palliative care at the end of life by disease groups [7].
Life-sustaining treatment and palliative care in patients with liver cirrhosis - legal, ethical, and practical issues
POLST Advance directives
Type of document Medical Order Legal document
Who completes Healthcare Professional (and patient or surrogate) Individual
Who needs one Seriously ill or frail (any age) for whom healthcare professional wouldn’t be surprised if died within year All competent adults
Appoints a surrogate No Yes
What is communicated Specific medical orders for treatment wishes. General wishes about treatment wishes. May help guide treatment plan after a medical emergency.
Ease in locating Very easy to find. Not very easy to find.
Patient has original. Copy is in medical record. Copy may be in a Registry (if your state has a Registry). Depends on where patient keeps it. If they have told someone where it is, given a copy to surrogate or to health care professional to put in his/her medical record.
The patient should meet all of the following criteria:
I. The patient's condition is life limiting, and the patient and/or family know this
II. The patient and/or family have elected treatment goals directed toward relief of symptoms, rather than the underlying disease.
III. The patient has either of the following criteria:
A. Documented clinical progression of disease, which may include:
1. Progression of the primary disease process as listed in the disease-specific criteria, as documented by serial physician assessment, laboratory, radiologic, or other studies
2. Multiple emergency department visits or inpatient hospitalizations over the prior 6 months
3. For homebound patients receiving home health services, nursing assessment may document decline
4. For patients who do not qualify under 1, 2, or 3, a recent decline in functional status should be documented; clinical judgment is required
B. Documented recent impaired nutritional status related to the terminal process:
1. Unintentional, progressive weight loss of >10% over the prior 6 months.
2. Serum albumin <25 g/L may be a helpful prognostic indicator, but should not be used in isolation from other factors above
Highlights of Guidelines for Specific Diseases
Heart disease:
Pulmonary disease:
Dementia:
Liver disease, advanced cirrhosis:
I. Both serum albumin <25 g/L, and either international normalization ratio > 1.5 on no anticoagulants, or prothrombin time prolonged >5 seconds over control
II. At least 1 of the following: intractable ascites or hepatic encephalopathy, spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, hepatorenal syndrome, recurrent variceal bleeding
III. Other factors contributing to a poor prognosis: progressive malnutrition, muscle wasting, continued active alcoholism, hepatocellular carcinoma, and hepatitis B surface antigen positivity
Renal disease:
Acute stroke and coma:
Chronic, after stroke:
Child-Pugh grade C decompensated liver cirrhosis patients with at least one of the following criteria may be considered to be at end-of-life unless liver transplantation is possible.
 1) Hepatorenal syndrome that does not improve despite active treatment
 2) Serious hepatic encephalopathy that does not improve despite active treatment
 3) Variceal bleeding that does not improve despite active treatment
Table 1. Physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST) and advance directives
Table 2. National hospice and palliative care organization general medical guidelines for determining prognosis in selected non-cancer diseases [19,20]
Table 3. KASL’s official opinion on the definition of ‘end-of-life’ for patients with liver disease