Futile medical care is the continued provision of medical care or treatment to a patient when there is no reasonable hope of a cure or benefit. This may be in the form of a surgeon operating on a terminal cancer patient or doctors keeping a brain-dead person on life-support machines for reasons other than to harvest their organs. It is a sensitive area that often causes conflicts between medical practitioners and patients or kin, who expect everything possible to be done for their loved ones, regardless of the cost or implications for other patients.
Proponents of evidence-based medicine may suggest discontinuing the use of any treatment that has not been shown to provide a measurable benefit. Where there is no hope for improvement of an incapacitating condition, no treatment is warranted. Futile care is distinct from euthanasia because euthanasia involves active intervention to end life, while withholding futile medical care does not encourage, nor speed the natural onset of death. The difference is of utmost importance to physicians who have taken and who adhere to the traditional Hippocratic oath, and have thus taken a professional vow that under no circumstances will they "prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause death."
One could say that it is impossible to reach a firm definition of futile medical care, because this would depend upon universal agreement about the point at which there is no further benefit to intervention, and different involved parties may always disagree about the amount and type of benefit under discussion. For instance, a cancer patient may be willing to undergo yet more chemotherapy with a very expensive medication for the benefit of a few weeks of life, while medical staff, the insurance company, and close relatives may all feel otherwise, for different reasons.
A 2010 survey of more than 10,000 physicians in the United States found respondents divided on the issue of recommending or giving "life-sustaining therapy when judged that it was futile", with 23.6% saying they would do so, 37% saying they would not, and 39.4% selecting "It depends".
Read more about Futile Medical Care: Arguments Against Providing Futile Medical Care, Issues in Futile Care Considerations
Famous quotes containing the words futile, medical and/or care:
“It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Unusual precocity in children, is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“And this is the moral—Stick to your sphere,
Or if you insist, as you have a right,
On spreading your wings for a loftier flight,
The moral is—Take care how you light.”
—John Townsend Trowbridge (1827–1916)