About 20 percent of ICU patients may receive care believed by physicians to be futile.

The Los Angeles Times (9/10, Healy, 3.07M) “Science Now” blog reports that research published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that approximately 20 percent of patients in intensive care units may receive “care and treatment judged by the physician in charge to be ineffective, needlessly aggressive or pointless given the patient’s” condition. The research, which was performed at a single “academic medical system in Los Angeles,” indicated “that of 1,125 patients who spent time in the ICU during a three-month period, 98 received treatment that their physicians perceived as ‘possibly futile,’ and 123 received treatment that their physicians considered futile.” What’s more, this care was expensive, “adding up to $2.6 million over a three-month period.”

        Bloomberg News (9/10, Ostrow, 1.41M) reports that the study was the “first to look at how pervasive futile medical treatments are for critical-care patients and the costs of those treatments, said Neil Wenger, a senior study author.”

        MedPage Today (9/10, Smith, 185K) reports, however, that “the findings should be interpreted with caution, argued Robert Truog, MD...and Douglas White, MD,” who “wrote in an accompanying commentary” that “while the cost of futile care in the study is substantial, it’s unlikely that eliminating such care would save the whole amount because about 85% of intensive care unit (ICU) costs are fixed.”