Non-Proportional Medical Interventions at the End of Life in a High Complexity Hospital in Colombia

Purpose: To analyze the interventions carried out in a cohort of patients who died in a university hospital of high complexity and define their therapeutic proportionality, based on the study of the prevalence of "non-beneficial treatments". Methodology: Retrospective descriptive observational study, based on the review of medical records of patients who died in a two-year period in a highly complex university hospital. Results: 931 records of deceased patients were analyzed and categorized according to the criteria of "therapeutic proportionality". It was found that 54.7 % of the patients underwent diagnostic or therapeutic interventions classified as "disproportionate" according to the applied definition. Conclusion: Non-proportional or non-beneficial end-of-life interventions are prevalent in the clinical practice, which is a persistent problem of modern medicine that needs to be addressed, because its negative impact on patients, families, health professionals and the health system.