Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation of Elderly Persons

Excerpt

To the Editor: I found the article by Murphy and colleagues (1) regarding the generally poor outcome of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the elderly very interesting. The authors suggest that because there are subgroups of elderly patients that have a very slim chance of a good outcome with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, that we consider withholding it. I would argue, though, that cardiopulmonary resuscitation clearly is effective in restoring life to some elderly patients. The alternative is certain death, so what do we have to lose by trying cardiopulmonary resuscitation in these patients? The answer obviously is that the downside risk to doing