Management of decision of withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments in French EDs.

Background: Decisions of withholding or withdrawing life sustaining-treatments in emergency department are part of current practice but the decision-making process remains poorly described in the literature.

Study Objective: We conducted a study in two phases, the first comprising a retrospective chart review study of patients dying in the ED and the second comprising survey study of health care workers at 10 urban emergency departments in France.

Method: In a first step, we analyzed medical records based on fifteen criteria of the decision-making process grouped into four categories: the collegiality, the traceability, the management and the communication as recommended by the international guidelines.