ArticleIntensive care medicine2011
A national survey of Italian physicians' attitudes towards end-of-life decisions following the death of Eluana Englaro.
Article in Intensive care medicine, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
- Knowledge and perception of end-of-life bioethics among medical students. A comparative study between the University of Verona (Italy) and the University of Halle (Germany).BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- End of life in Italy: ethical issues and medical-legal aspects of medically assisted suicide.Monash bioethics review · 2026Article
- Towards a European End-of-Life Regulation: A Necessary Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- End-of-life in cancer patients: Medicolegal implications and ethical challenges in Europe.Open medicine (Warsaw, Poland) · 2025Review
- The night is dark and full of hesitation. The latest step in the legal trajectory of assisted suicide in Italy: through tentative judicial openings, bioethical contradictions and the Parliament's deafness.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Review
- Exploring end-of-life decision-making in China for disorders of consciousness.Annals of medicine · 2024Article
- Clinical and ethical challenges in decision-making for patients with disorders of consciousness and locked-in syndrome from Chinese neurologists' perspectives.Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders · 2024Article
- Perspectives of healthcare providers on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment and advanced directives for unresponsive wakefulness syndrome in China.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- Facing Death: Attitudes toward Physician-Assisted End of Life among Physicians Working at a Tertiary-Care-Hospital in Israel.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Take-Home Messages from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Strengths and Pitfalls of the Italian National Health Service from a Medico-Legal Point of View.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Ethical Challenges in Health Care Policy during COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2020Article
- The state of knowledge of young Italian medicolegal doctors on the law of provisions for informed consent and advance treatment directives: a multi-centric survey two years after the enactment of Law 219 of 2017.Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2020Article
- Shared care plan: an extraordinary tool for the personalization of medicine and respect for self-determination.Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2020Article
- Pneumonia in Nursing Home Patients With Advanced Dementia: Decisions, Intravenous Rehydration Therapy, and Discomfort.The American journal of hospice & palliative care · 2018Observational
- Nonconsensual withdrawal of nutrition and hydration in prolonged disorders of consciousness: authoritarianism and trustworthiness in medicine.Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM · 2014Article
- Regulation of advance directives in Italy: a bad law in the making.Intensive care medicine · 2012Article
- Diagnostic and ethical challenges in disorders of consciousness and locked-in syndrome: a survey of German neurologists.Journal of neurology · 2012Article
- Year in review in Intensive Care Medicine 2011: I. Nephrology, epidemiology, nutrition and therapeutics, neurology, ethical and legal issues, experimentals.Intensive care medicine · 2012Article
- End of life in intensive care unit.Translational medicine @ UniSa · 2011Article
- Modern medicine and the Hippocratic tradition of medicine: restoring professional values.Intensive care medicine · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEthical issues regarding patient care have recently been raised in Italy by the case of Eluana Englaro, a 36-year-old woman who remained in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for 17 years. There are no specific laws on the books in Italy regarding euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In November 2008, a controversial decision by the Italian Supreme Court granted the woman's father his wish to discontinue nutrition and hydration provided to her. Because of this historic decision, the authors carried out a survey of Italian physicians' beliefs regarding end-of-life practices.
methodsA questionnaire was e-mailed to 70,000 physicians working for the Italian Public Health System and University Medical Hospitals.
resultsA total of 22,219 doctors responded to the questionnaire (32.3%), of whom 17,252 (77.6%) had some experience in treating PVS patients. Nearly 70% of responding doctors were aware of PVS diagnostic criteria; most of them (61%) considered tube feeding to be a medical therapy, and 66% of respondents believed that withdrawal of assisted nutrition and hydration (ANH) might be appropriate depending on the patient's wishes. Moreover, even though 50% of doctors surveyed were not in favor of euthanasia, a significant percentage (42%) did approve of it, while 8% of this sample was uncertain.
conclusionsItalian doctors probably have the least experience in end-of-life decisions in Europe, therefore this national survey is a great chance to understand their authentic opinions regarding such remarkable issues. There is broad consensus that a clear legislative position regarding euthanasia and ANH is needed.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.