Toward the end of life, older cancer patients with terminal illness often prefer palliative over life-extending care and also prefer to die at home. However, care planning is not always consistent with patients’ preferences. In this article, discussions will be centered on patients’ autonomy of exercising control over their bodies within the current biotechnoscientific paradigm and in the context of population aging. More specifically, the biopolitical strategy of medicine in the context of hospital-centered health care control and of the frail condition of cancer patients in the intensive care unit will be considered in terms of the bioethics of protection. This ethical principle may provide support to these patients by ensuring that they receive appropriate treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial, and spiritual problems in an attempt to focus attention on the values of the ill person rather than limiting it to the illness.
The Functional Independence Measure was able to detect significant functional loss over a 6-month period in elderly patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting, suggesting that this scale is a promising tool for the assessment of functional recovery over time after cardiac surgery, especially in patients aged older than 70 years. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2015; ●●: ●●-●●.
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