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PubMed2000

Ethics in the intensive care unit with emphasis on medical futility in comatose survivors of cardiac arrest.

Medical futility refers to situations or cases in which treatment offers no meaningful benefit to the patient. Brain death does not pose a management problem because patients are considered to be dead. Management of other cases requires sequential considerations. First, the prognosis must be established with certainty. Then, if it is determined that there is no possibility of the patient regaining conscious awareness, a level of care should be decided through discussions involving the physician and significant others. Usually there is a consensus that high-level intensive care is not justified to maintain such a low quality of life. When the patient's advance directives or the substitute decision maker's request differs from the physician's recommendations, there are methods of resolving the issues that respect ethical and legal principles.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1997

Medical futility and the social context.

The concept of medical futility has come to be seen in some quarters as a value-neutral trump card when dealing with issues of power and conflicting values in medicine. I argue that this concept is potentially useful, but only in a social context that provides a normative framework for its use. This social context needs to include a broad consensus about the purpose of medicine and the nature of the physician-patient relationship.

Conflict, Psychological↗
PubMed1998

Foregoing life support in medically futile patients.

Advances in medical technology have rendered the ability to provide prolonged physiologic support of incurable or terminally ill patients commonplace in the intensive care unit. In tandem, there has been a global shift in the intensivist's mindset from solely pursuing an unrelenting course of aggressive therapy, to a recognition of the limitations of intensive care and the appropriate discontinuance of nonbeneficial therapy. Underpinning this shift remains the physician's adherence to the ethical principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and disclosure; the patient's right to autonomy and self determination; and the community's right to just distribution of medical resources. When the doctor assumes the role of patient advocate, and assesses illness severity and evaluate recovery, or lack of, to a quality consistent with the patient's own life philosophy, he is able to communicate to the family a course of action that is in the patient's best interest. A consensus on withholding or withdrawal of care is often then achieved. The process of foregoing or withdrawing life-sustaining therapy itself, must be carried out with sensitivity and empathy, with the primary goal of providing comfort and reducing suffering.

Critical Illness↗
PubMed1999

Medical futility and the critically ill patient.

Today, the world of critical care medicine has given us the capabilities to accomplish things that were only dreamed of a few decades ago. When combined with the increasing importance of patient autonomy and economics in healthcare, these new capabilities have caused conflicts about what is too little, and what is too much. Medical futility becomes an issue whenever these conflicts arise. Understanding how to deal with issues surrounding futility begins with defining it. A firm definition is not possible or desirable, but revolves around the probability of being able to achieve a patient's goal with modern medicine. Establishing this understanding between the patient and their family (team), and the healthcare team, is dependent on trust between the two. It must be recognized that there are many reasons for families to not trust healthcare professionals and that these reasons need to be explored and dealt with. Sometimes conflicts regarding predictions and economics need to be addressed. Once trust is established a goal for a course of medical treatment should be discussed from the patient's perspective. This discussion should involve the physician's best judgement as to the chances of achieving this goal, and what type of discomfort or indignity, if any, the patient may experience. Only after these have been clearly discussed can decisions regarding medical futility be made. To date, the U. S. Courts have refused to grant physicians and hospitals the power to override the opinions of family members on matters of futility. However, with time, a consensus of public opinion should influence decisions regarding medical futility.

APACHE↗
PubMed1992

Medically futile care: the role of the physician in setting limits.

In an effort to clarify the concept of "medically futile care," two types of futile care are identified: 1) care that produces no demonstrable effect; and 2) care that produces an effect that is believed by the speaker to be of no net benefit. It is the second type of futile care, when a patient or surrogate and the clinician disagree over the benefit that the patient will receive from an intervention, that is most interesting morally and that cannot properly be labelled medically futile. As such, decisions to limit access to care deemed futile should not rest with medical professionals. This Article argues for a limited duty of clinicians to provide life-prolonging and some other fundamental care that is equitably funded and desired by the patient while competent, even if the clinician believes that such interventions will produce no net benefit.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Beyond medical futility: a proposed taxonomy of ultra vires acts in medicine.

When is a physician's act non-medical, and how might such non-medical acts be classified? One approach, analogous to the substantive due process inquiry employed by American courts weighing the constitutionality of legislative acts, would involve consideration of the following questions: 1) Is a legitimate medical goal being pursued? 2) Are the means being employed legitimately medical? 3) Are the goals and means appropriately related? Accordingly, a physician acts medically when employing legitimate and appropriate medical means in pursuit of a legitimate medical goal. In contrast, when the goals pursued or means employed are not legitimately medical, or when the two are not appropriately related, the act is medically ultra vires ("beyond the powers")--that is, an act beyond the physician's power or authority--and consequently non-medical. Medically ultra vires acts may be further sub-classified depending upon which prong of the above trident is defective. Where the goal of the act, though achievable, is not legitimately medical, the act is medically ultra vires because of goal illegitimacy, or medically ultra fines ("beyond the ends"). Where the means employed are not legitimately medical, the act is medically ultra vires because of means illegitimacy, or medically ultra modos ("beyond the means"). Where the means and goals are not appropriately related, the act is medically ultra vires because of means-goals disjunction, or medically ultra nexus ("beyond the connection"). Medical futility (where the medical goal in question, albeit legitimate, cannot be achieved by the act under consideration) represents the paradigmatic example of the latter.

Classification↗
PubMed2004

Medical futility and physician discretion.

Some patients have no chance of surviving if not treated, but very little chance if treated. A number of medical ethicists and physicians have argued that treatment in such cases is medically futile and a matter of physician discretion. This paper critically examines that position. According to Howard Brody and others, a judgment of medical futility is a purely technical matter, which physicians are uniquely qualified to make. Although Brody later retracted these claims, he held to the view that physicians need not consult the patient or his family to determine their values before deciding not to treat. This is because professional integrity dictates that treatment should not be undertaken. The argument for this claim is that medicine is a profession and a social practice, and thus capable of breaches of professional integrity. Underlying professional integrity are two moral principles, one concerning harm, the other fraud. According to Brody both point to the fact that when the odds of survival are very low treatment is a violation of professional integrity. The details of this skeletal argument are exposed and explained, and the full argument is criticised. On a number of counts, it is found wanting. If anything, professional integrity points to the opposite conclusion.

Ethics, Medical↗
PubMed1999

The medical futility controversy: bioethical implications for the critical care nurse.

Medical futility is a recent, complex bioethical issue. There is disagreement about how futility should be defined and who should be involved in futility decisions when an impasse exists between the patient/family and the physician. Bioethical discussions about Quinlan and Cruzan of the past have been replaced with the Wanglie, Baby K, and Linares cases--all of which involved critical care settings. Nurses often are involved in the debate and encounter ethical conflicts. Cost-containment, managed care, scarce resource allocation, and care due the elderly have fueled the debate. Key issues and their importance for critical care nurses will be reviewed.

Conflict, Psychological↗
PubMed2002

Medical futility in pediatrics: is it time for a public policy?

For the past decade, there has been a debate raging within the medical, ethical, and legal communities focusing on the issue of medical futility. What has fueled the fires of this multi-faceted debate is the patient rights movement and the perception that the right to self-determination extends not only to the refusal of medical treatments but to demands for overtreatment. The medical specialities of Pediatrics and Neonatology further complicate this issue because despite the dramatic technological advances in these areas, diagnostic and prognostic certainty for many medical conditions remains illusive. As a result, surrogates have to decide whether children with various congenital anomalies, diseases, and genetic defects should be treated aggressively if at all. This uncertainty has led to conflicts between physicians and families about whether certain medical treatments are futile and thus not in the best interest of the child. From a legal and ethical perspective, one way to resolve these conflicts would be a specific process-based public policy approach to futility determinations on a case-by-case basis. The medical futility policy proposed as a public policy protects the patient's right to self-determination; the physician's right of professional integrity; society's concern for the just allocation of scarce medical resources; and is securely rooted in the ethical tradition of promoting and defending human dignity.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1996

Medical futility: response to critiques.

Six years ago, we proposed a patient benefit-centered definition of medical futility that included both quantitative and qualitative components. We distinguished between an effect of a treatment that is limited to some part of a patient's body and a benefit that improves the patient as a whole. The quantitative portion of our definition stipulated that physicians should regard a treatment as futile if empirical data show that the treatment has less than a 1 in 100 chance of benefiting the patient. The qualitative portion of our definition stipulated that if a treatment merely preserves permanent unconsciousness or cannot end dependence on intensive medical care, physicians should consider the treatment futile. In this paper, we clarify and modify our original proposal and respond to the following major criticisms: 1) Medical futility is simply an attempt to increase the power of the physician over the patient and to repeal recent hard-gained advances in patient autonomy; 2) no professional or societal consensus has been achieved about the definition of futility; 3) futility is a value-laden determination, the usurpation of which by medicine is inappropriate unless only a so-called value-free or strict physiologic definition of futility is used; 4) the concept of futility is not practically useful because empirical treatment data cannot be applied with certainty to any given patient; 5) futility undermines our pluralistic society and threatens, among other things, the free exercise of religion; and 6) because cost considerations will ultimately dictate all such decisions, futility is an unnecessary concept.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1990

Medical futility: its meaning and ethical implications.

The notion of medical futility has quantitative and qualitative roots that offer a practical approach to its definition and application. Applying these traditions to contemporary medical practice, we propose that when physicians conclude (either through personal experience, experiences shared with colleagues, or consideration of published empiric data) that in the last 100 cases a medical treatment has been useless, they should regard that treatment as futile. If a treatment merely preserves permanent unconsciousness or cannot end dependence on intensive medical care, the treatment should be considered futile. Unlike decision analysis, which defines the expected gain from a treatment by the joint product of probability of success and utility of outcome, our definition of futility treats probability and utility as independent thresholds. Futility should be distinguished from such concepts as theoretical impossibility, such expressions as "uncommon" or "rare," and emotional terms like "hopelessness." In judging futility, physicians must distinguish between an effect, which is limited to some part of the patient's body, and a benefit, which appreciably improves the person as a whole. Treatment that fails to provide the latter, whether or not it achieves the former, is "futile". Although exceptions and cautions should be borne in mind, we submit that physicians can judge a treatment to be futile and are entitled to withhold a procedure on this basis. In these cases, physicians should act in concert with other health care professionals, but need not obtain consent from patients or family members.

Critical Care↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Mechanical ventilation and medical futility or dysthanasia, the dialectic of high technology in intensive medicine].

Dysthanasia or any of its synonyms is a consequence of excessive technical science, without any reasonable chance of achieving a therapeutic benefit for the patient. Medical futility is a distressing ethical dilemma of intensive care medicine. Its recognition has led to a precept support in various institutions and organizations. Not withdrawing or withholding mechanical ventilation in certain circumstances can be considered as a paradigmatic model of medical futility. The understanding of this posture implies a philosophical approach and reflexion of medical practice.

Critical Care↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bioethical principles and care-based ethics in medical futility.

The process for solving ethical, legal, and moral dilemmas in the field of medicine is complex and time consuming. Frequently, the constraint of time forces the healthcare professional to make decisions quickly. When working with the cancer population, one faces, additionally, the dilemma of medical futility. Guidelines from the bioethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmalificence, and justice help to address this dilemma. The use of care-based ethics allows healthcare professionals to establish trust, thus enabling patients and their families to be open to change and make realistic decisions. This article contrasts care-based ethical theory with justice-based ethical theory, using a case presentation to illustrate the importance of care-based ethics in making a moral decision to forgo medically futile treatment.

Aged↗
PubMed1998

A preliminary analysis of medical futility decisionmaking: law and professional attitudes.

Judicial decisions reviewed in this article indicate that courts have taken two disparate approaches to disputes over futility of treatment. To explore whether a consensus on medical futility is developing among hospitals, the authors conducted a nationwide survey of health care professionals at hospitals. Respondents assigned importance ratings to factors used in recent futility decisions made at their institutions. The resulting importance ratings showed significant variation by characteristics of the institution (comparing respondents from for-profit, not-for-profit, and government hospitals) and by profession of the respondent (comparing physicians and nurses). The respondents' judgments endorsed three distinct strategies for making futility decisions (i.e., emphasis on the patient's decision preferences, providing for the patient and family, and adhering to objective medical and social norms).

Analysis of Variance↗