Doctors use many ways to sustain life in critically ill patients including a Life support machine. It is usually a ventilator or respirator that maintains oxygen flow throughout the body by pushing it into the lungs. A patient might rely on the machine for a temporary condition such as pneumonia critical illnesses s affecting the heart, brain, and lungs which are the most vital organs.
Sustaining a patient on life support is an issue that attracts much debate and division on whether it is right to keep it running when the patient health is dire.
Doctors continue sustaining patients in life support machines for these reasons;
- Increase chances of survival
- Grant patient wishes to fight their illness as much as possible regardless of the suffering
- Organ donation by keeping the patient alive until the right time to donate
- Allow families that were hoping for a recovery to come to terms that their patient cannot overcome the disease and cannot escape death
Doctors can advice stopping of the life support machine if they see no hope of recovering because vital organs cannot function independently. Sustaining life support will only lengthen the process of dying, and it will be too costly.
Depending on the person death can come immediately, few hour or days after a ventilator shut off. The patient’s family has a responsibility to make the decision when the person is unable to make the declaration and has not made any wish.
The principle of withdrawing or withholding life support has become an ethical issue. There are many causes where medics may suggest continued use of life support machine or a switch off only to encounter opposition by the family.
Common Reasons for Stopping a Life Support Machine
1. Agony
Life support may help to prolong life, but the quality does not bring any comfort or dignity. Based on this situation, life support can make a patient to undergo unnecessary suffering that does not carry any chances of survival. The argument is that it is better to switch off the life support machine because it only prolongs the agony and the dying process. It explains the process why some people inform their loved ones in advance that they should not be put on life support if the diagnosis shows they will be in a persistent vegetative state.
2. Resource drain
The cost of putting a patient on a life support machine is high, and the family might feel that it is unsustainable to continue using it when there are no remote signs of recovery. A patient loses needs doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel to provide complete care in addition to the cost of using the machine. The hospital bill and professional fees will add up to a staggering amount. The overall coast will take a heavy toll on the finances, and without a guarantee of healing, it will be a lose-lose situation. The patient will still die, and the family will end up broke.
3. Overwhelming side effects
Life support treatments help to prolong life, but some like devices for artificial hydration or nutrition can cause extreme side effects. Ventilators do not cause side effects when in use. It is only after removal that the side effects begin to manifest, but they mostly occur if a patient has been receiving sedatives.
Switching off a ventilator can cause an abnormal heartbeat, low blood pressure, severe respiratory difficulties, weakened muscles and busted eardrums. Some families or doctors will consider it unethical to recommend continued use of life support machine when the patient will suffer from the severe side after ceasing to rely on it. Within a moment, the person’s health will be critical thus those concerned can decide to avoid prolonged use of ventilator that does not provide hope of healing. The loved ones and doctors of a patient have a responsibility to make a determination depending on the case merits regardless of the ethical role in defining the moral issue of life support machine.