In recent years, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has invested in work involving the endorsement of treatments that aim to prolong the life of terminally ill patients. This research model provides identification of passive interventions implemented in the health system.
Given some of these evaluations, some criteria have emerged that must be met for these therapeutics to be taken or implemented, such as the patient presenting a life expectancy of less than 24 months, in addition to evidence that the intended treatment extends the life span of the user. in hair at least 3 months, when compared to the treatments you use.
Despite two advances obtained in this field of knowledge, it is still uncertain whether certain policies contemplate this population reflect the real preference of the general population, not what refers to priority of intervention to the detriment of other groups of patients.
Given this question, it emerges into the presentation of Koonal Shah, entitled “Valuing Health at the End of Life” as a report of two methods and preliminary results of their literature review regarding the following question: “Do members of the general public desire to place greater weight on a unit of health gain for end of life patients than on that for other types of patients?”
Most of the studies presented as a methodological approach to ask the interviewees to adopt the ethics of the “manager”, and his role as a decision maker, in the society in which we live, in the process of responding to questions that are typically of interest to health managers. Your answers should be based on what is considered most appropriate for the society, regardless of whether two interviewees will benefit or not from these decisions.
Three studies in the willingness-to-pay model, in turn, employ an individual perspective of the interviewee with respect to his or her own health, given an imminent death scenario. This approach aims to identify through the identified preferences, how to guide the allocation of resources in a way directed to the society in question.
Two studies endorsed, most of them including the quality of the patient not developed in the study, being that in some of these the quality of reality was one of two priority criteria to be validated. Researchers will attempt to determine whether life-related preferences are influenced by the quality of two individuals. Evidence shows that interviewees become less concerned about the number of years of life remaining when patients in question are more healthy.
Reviews about preferences during a pregnancy scenario indicate that these patients present greater assertivity when making a decision. Identified also a tendency of the participants to present greater concern with the treatment of patients with lower quality of life than those with reduced life expectancy, but these are not only based on studies that contemplate both states, both simultaneously and individually.
The need to develop new studies on the topic emerges from this investigation, especially due to the small number of studies that address the state of “preparation” of two patients before receiving a treatment schedule in the terminal state.