Limitation of the therapeutic effort: ethical and legal justification for withholding and/or withdrawing life sustaining treatments

Limitation of the therapeutic effort: ethical and legal justification for withholding and/or withdrawing life sustaining treatments

Withholding and withdrawing a treatment already established are two forms of limitation of the therapeutic effort (LTE). The question of undergoing or not undergoing lifesaving medical treatments is not restricted to a specific health care context, as it refers to a variety of treatments, and it does not concern a restricted group of diseases. LTE has become part of the options compatible with ...

Considerations regarding withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

Withholding and withdrawing of life sustaining treatment in the newborn.

The rapid progress of medical technology has resulted in more opportunities to maintain the life of infants in serious and potentially life threatening situations. Whether to treat such infants is a common dilemma. The burden of these difficult decisions rests almost equally on distraught parents and relatives and on the professional staff of neonatal units. Sometimes, either parents or care te...

Withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining therapies are not the same

Numerous lines of evidence support the premise that withholding and withdrawing life support measures in the intensive care unit are not the same. These include questionnaires, practical observations and an examination of national medical guidelines. It is important to distinguish between the two end of life options as their outcomes and management are significantly different. Appreciation of t...

Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment: the necessity of discrepancies in ethical reasoning

Observations can be proposed regarding the study by Rydvall and Lynöe [1]. The use of standardised questionnaires in the general population measures the intention of the persons interviewed but not the reality of reasoning in a concrete clinical situation. Most studies report that factors such as proxy comprehension and symptoms of anxiety or depression are major determinants of medical end-of-...