Key Points
New Delhi: Thedraftguidelines proposed by the Centre for withdrawal of life support to terminally ill patients have been presented as groundwork ahead of larger directives to states on implementing the Supreme Courts 2018 judgment on Advance Medical Directives (AMDs) and living wills, and withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining treatments...
The draft norms on the withdrawal of life support, released last week by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to obtain public feedback by 20 October, define terminally ill patients as those in an irreversible or incurable condition, and for whom death is inevitable in the foreseeable future...
After we publish the final guidelines on withdrawal of life support to terminally ill patients, plans are afoot to send detailed directives to states on the effective implementation of AMD and withdrawal and withholding of life-support treatment or passive euthanasia, a senior health ministry official told ThePrint...
These include mechanical ventilation, vasopressors (drugs that increase blood pressure by constricting blood vessels), dialysis, surgical procedures, transfusions, parenteral nutrition (intravenous feeding outside the digestive tract) or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO (a machine that allows the heart or lungs of patients with a life-threatening disease or injury to function), the draft guidelines say...
Hence, the withdrawal of life-support treatments in such patients is regarded as a standard of ICU care worldwide, and has been upheld by several jurisdictions, the draft norms say...
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