This special issue, Withholding artificial nutrition and hydration, comprises several papers, commentaries and responses centred largely around the issues raised by the 2011 decision of the English Court of Protection in W v M. In that case, the mother of an adult patient applied for the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (specifically, artificial nutrition and hydration). In 2003, the pat...

Short-term resource adequacy is the ability of a system with a set of given resources to meet the load over the short term. In the aftermath of the 2000–2001 California crisis, focus on resource adequacy has come to the forefront of market design issues. Various approaches, such as capacity requirements, capacity payments and financial options requirements, have been proposed to ensure resource...

One of the key stimulators of intestinal development in the chick is physical exposure to feed, while feed withholding delays the onset of gut development. A delay of 24-72 hours in onset of feeding is quite common in the poultry industry due to variation in hatching time and hatchery treatments. As intestinal development occurs in concert with the development of the gut associated lymphoid tis...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this multicenter nationwide study was to reveal the influence of social and non-medical factors on qualifying children to commence chronic dialysis, to withhold it or to withdraw it. It was also important to compare the real and postulated significance of particular factors that were taken under consideration by pediatric nephrologists, neonatologists and anesthesiologists...

Many medical ethicists accept the thesis that there is no moral difference between withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining therapy. In this paper, we offer an interesting counterexample which shows that this thesis is not always true. Withholding is distinguished from withdrawing by the simple fact that therapy must have already been initiated in order to speak coherently about withdrawal. ...

BACKGROUND Evidence concerning how Japanese physicians think and behave in specific clinical situations that involve withholding or withdrawal of medical interventions for end-of-life or frail elderly patients is yet insufficient. METHODS To analyze decisions and actions concerning the withholding/withdrawal of life-support care by Japanese physicians, we conducted cross-sectional web-based i...

BACKGROUND Hydration to prevent contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) induces a diagnostic delay when performing computed tomography-pulmonary angiography (CTPA) in patients suspected of having acute pulmonary embolism. AIM To analyze whether withholding hydration is non-inferior to sodium bicarbonate hydration before CTPA in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). METHODS We pe...