Dehydration and the terminally ill.

Abstract

not be given, and stray widely from the central theme of my paper which was the issue of the need for artificial hydration when a person is rendered incapable of swallowing by sedation. I am not talking about 'a certain amount of physiological dehydration' in the dying process, but of gross, iatrogenic dehydration. As I pointed out if sedation is continued without hydration, death from dehydration will be inevitable, whatever the underlying pathology, within about seven days. Of course death from natural