Consent to dialyzer reuse: is it ethically necessary?

Cost-effectiveness analysis of the treatment of end-stage renal disease in Brazil

Cost-effectiveness analysis compared four treatments of end-stage renal disease in Brazil: continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), in-center hemodialysis (HD), cadaver donor transplantation (CD-Tx), and living related donor transplantation (LR-Tx). After 2 years, the costs per year of survival were CAPD, $12,134; HD, $10,065; CD-Tx, $6,978; and LR-Tx, $3,022. The HD cost was lower than CAPD partially because of the reuse of hemodialyzers in Brazil. Although less cost-effective, both dialysis treatments yielded more years of survival after 2 years. This analysis reveals a trade-off between cost per year of survival and years of survival.

"Should the grandparents die?": allocation of medical resources with an aging population

The question in my title—a deliberate inversion of Kuhse and Singer's now-famous question, “Should the baby live?”—is one that is being asked more and more frequently. As Gerald Gruman has observed:

The medical care needs of aged persons, and how we, as individuals and societies, will fulfill these needs in an era of a perceived scarcity of medical resources, are a frequent topic of discussion today. The “scarcity” of medical resources is frequently a given in discussions of allocation priorities.