In the article titled “Documentation on Withdrawal of Life Support in Adult Patients in the Intensive Care Unit” (Am J Crit Care. July 2004:328–334), the authors were sorry to discover that they misquoted Campbell et al. The authors were looking for time to death following withdrawal of life support so they could develop an intervention to prepare families who wish to be present during withdrawal of life support. They misinterpreted Campbell and colleagues’ statement, “The average length of time required to complete the terminal wean was 14.9+/−1.24 minutes” to mean that was the time it took from beginning of withdrawal until the patient died. Later in that same article, Campbell et al stated that the average duration of patient survival after weaning was completed was 24.20+/−9.34 hours, with 2.3 hours as the median; their point was that these patients continue to require care after withdrawal of life...

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