Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Saving Treatment: Ordinary/Extraordinary Means, Autonomy & Futility

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...

Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in children.

Modern medicine gives us the ability to prolong life even in situations where it may not be right to do so. This article discusses some of the complex ethical and legal issues surrounding withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in children, including the concepts of futility, best interests and intolerability. We advocate the use of a structured framework to help guide decision-ma...

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...

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...