Withdrawing and withholding treatment: comments on new guidelines

Withdrawing and withholding treatment: comments on new guidelines.

A new practice framework for clinicians has recently been issued by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health through their Ethics Advisory Committee. It deals with babies and children for whom intensive treatment may not be in their best interest. These are diYcult cases. Absolute certainty is rarely possible; there are inevitably issues of conscience and conflict, which add to the bur...

Considerations regarding withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

Ethical aspects of withdrawing and withholding treatment.

Decisions about withdrawing and withholding treatment are common in health care. During almost every encounter between health professionals and patients a decision needs to be made about treatment options. In most cases these choices do not pose any difficulty, for example, starting antibiotics when a patient has an infection. However, decisions not to treat, or to stop treating, raise fundamen...

On the ethics of withholding and withdrawing medical treatment

A general rationale is presented for withholding and withdrawing medical treatment in end-of-life situations, and an argument is offered for the moral irrelevance of the distinction, both in the context of pharmaceutical treatments, such as chemotherapy in cancer, and in the context of life-sustaining treatments, such as the artificial ventilator in lateral amyotrophic sclerosis. It is argued t...

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...