I have seen a lot of very sad situations where my crews and I “saved” someone with CPR and defibrillation, only to have them never regain consciousness and be on machines for extended periods of time before they finally are “disconnected”.I
But in several situations that we know of personally... People suffering from some form of dementia have been taken on a trip to Oregon never to return. People with this type of condition are easily manipulated in many cases. The biggest problem that we have with this is that people who are diagnosed with dementia often have a problem with the prescription drugs, nutritional supplements, tumors, dietary deficiencies or other causes that go away with competent medical care. My wife is a retired nurse who spent a lot of years working with persons with diminished mental capacity. She saw a lot of cases of dementia that were thought to be permanent and turned out not to be.
Bad html, sorry.
It has been said that a good paramedic knows when to go balls to the wall on a code and when to slow walk and go through the motions on resuscitation efforts. I could not handle that choice.