Objective: To understand the attitude of Japanese individuals toward end-of-life care.
Subjects and methods: The present study was conducted among the individuals who participated in a public seminar and completed a questionnaire related to end-of-life care. We analyzed their responses. One hundred seventy-six participants (mean age: 64.7 years) answered the questionnaires, which asked whether they were familiar with the concept of a living will, who should decide their end-of-life care planning, what kind of nutritional support they would prefer to receive at the end-of-life, and what kind of medical treatments they were unwilling to receive. The answers were compared between the two age groups: those who were ≥75 years of age and those who were <75 years of age.
Results: A total of 49% were aware of the concept of a living will and 8% had actually written a living will. The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant. Most of the respondents (76% of the respondents who were <75 years of age and 63% of the respondents who were ≥75 years of age) thought that they should be able to decide on their end-of-life care planning themselves; however, more of the respondents who were ≥75 years of age wanted to depend on their primary care physician for the decision. The proportion of respondents who wished to maintain only oral intake until the end of their life was 54%; there was no significant difference between the two groups. Among the subjects who were ≥75 years of age, a smaller number of respondents indicated a medical treatment that they were unwilling to receive.
Conclusion: In the present study, most of the late-elderly respondents indicated that they preferred to decide on their own end-of-life care planning by themselves, as was seen in younger respondents.