Doctors who help patients end their lives frequently fail to consult with other physicians and sometimes don't even involve the patient in the decision, a new study found.

The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, reported that of 355 cancer specialists surveyed, 10.7 percent reported a case of either euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.

Euthanasia--where a doctor ends a patient's life--is illegal; Oregon is the only state that allows physician-assisted suicide.

Supporters of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have proposed three primary safeguards for terminally ill patients: the patient must initiate and repeat the request; the patient must be evaluated by another physician; and the patient must be in extreme physical pain.

Slightly more than a third of the doctors who reported a case said they adhered to all three guidelines. But in 15.3 percent of the cases, the patients were never involved in the decision, a finding Rita Marker, executive director of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, called 'obscene.'

In those cases, the families had asked to end the patients' lives, which the authors of the study characterized as 'most worrisome.'

More than 60 percent of doctors who had a case said they did not consult with another physician, the report said.

The report also found that in nearly every instance--97.4 percent--the patients were in unremitting pain or unable to care for themselves. 'Oncologists often look at someone in severe pain and say, 'There's nothing more I can do,' when in fact if that doctor cannot do anything, he or she should find one who can,' Marker said.

The study found several doctors who did not actually administer a lethal dose of medication but left instructions for their nurses to do so.

Karen Kaplan, executive director of Choice in Dying, said the study showed how few people are really interested in euthanasia or suicide, even when facing terminal illness.

Their numbers would shrink, she said, if society paid better attention to caring for people near the end of life.