Some individuals facing dementia contemplate hastening their own death: weighing the possibility of living longer with dementia against the alternative of dying sooner but avoiding the later stages of cognitive and functional impairment. This weighing resonates with an ethical and legal consensus in the United States that individuals can voluntarily choose to forgo life‐sustaining interventions and also that medical professionals can support these choices even when they will result in an earlier death. For these reasons, whether and how a terminally ill individual can choose to control the timing of their death is a topic that cannot be avoided when considering the dementia trajectory. With a focus on the U.S. context, this landscape review considers the status of provisions that would legally permit people facing dementia to hasten death with appropriate support from medical professionals. This review can be used to plan and guide clinical and legal practitioner discussion and policy development concerning evolving questions not fully covered by existing medical decision‐making provisions.

中文翻译：

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当痴呆症患者选择加速死亡时：美国当前伦理、法律、医疗和社会考虑的现状

一些面临痴呆症的人考虑加速自己的死亡：权衡患有痴呆症而活得更久的可能性与早点死亡但避免后期认知和功能障碍的选择。这种权衡与美国的道德和法律共识产生共鸣，即个人可以自愿选择放弃维持生命的干预措施，而且医疗专业人员可以支持这些选择，即使它们会导致提前死亡。由于这些原因，身患绝症的人是否以及如何选择控制自己的死亡时间，是考虑痴呆症轨迹时无法回避的话题。本次景观审查重点关注美国的情况，考虑了合法允许痴呆症患者在医疗专业人员的适当支持下加速死亡的规定的状况。该审查可用于计划和指导临床和法律从业者关于现有医疗决策规定未完全涵盖的不断发展的问题的讨论和政策制定。