Why Restart a Heart?

IT HAS HAPPENED IN MAYBE A MILLION TELEVISION shows: the monitor above a critically ill patient's bed goes beep, beep, beep . . . beeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Doctors and nurses rush to the bedside. The patient's heart has stopped, and the medical professionals go into a frenzy trying to start it up again.

What TV rarely acknowledges is the aftermath. Few of the patients revived ever get well enough to leave the hospital -- and a study from Duke University Medical Center shows how few. Doctors monitored 146 very sick people given cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) over a three-year period. Only 58% could be revived at all, and of those who were, fully 95% stayed in the hospital, usually hooked up to life-support systems, until they died. Average cost: $150,000. The solution, say the Duke researchers, is to explain the consequences of resuscitation to seriously ill patients and listen to those who don't want heroic life-prolonging measures.