ReviewJournal of medical ethics2007
Withholding and withdrawing life support in critical care settings: ethical issues concerning consent.
Review in Journal of medical ethics, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cardiologists' perspective on termination of pacemaker therapy-an anonymous survey among cardiologists in Germany.Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society · 2026Article
- Islamic Conceptions of Human Dignity and Their Relevance for Bioethics of End-of-Life Healthcare.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2026Article
- Predictors and outcomes of withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments in intensive care units in Singapore: a multicentre observational study.Journal of intensive care · 2024Article
- Critical Consideration of Tuberculosis Management of Papua New Guinea Nationals and Cross-Border Health Issues in the Remote Torres Strait Islands, Australia.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2022Article
- Physicians' decision-making when managing pediatric patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness: A qualitative study.European journal of neurology · 2022Article
- A medical ethics review of elective orthopaedic surgery management during the pandemic COVID-19 Era.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2022Review
- Attitudes about withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging treatment, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and physician assisted suicide: a cross-sectional survey among the general public in Croatia.BMC medical ethics · 2022Article
- COVID-19 and medical professionalism in a pandemic.Postgraduate medical journal · 2021Article
- Is shortening the response-to-treatment waiting time appropriate during the Covid-19 pandemic?Palliative & supportive care · 2020Article
- Ethics for surgeons during the COVID-19 pandemic, review article.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2020Review
- Summary of the Key Concepts on How to Develop a Perinatal Palliative Care Program.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2020Review
- Bioethics in Practice: Unilateral Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders.Ochsner journal · 2016Article
- "What the patient wants…": Lay attitudes towards end-of-life decisions in Germany and Israel.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2015Article
- Care of terminally-ill patients: an opinion survey among critical care healthcare providers in the Middle East.African health sciences · 2013Article
- End of life in intensive care unit.Translational medicine @ UniSa · 2011Article
- Clinical review: Considerations for the triage of maternity care during an influenza pandemic--one institution's approach.Critical care (London, England) · 2010Article
- Deciding in the dark: advance directives and continuation of treatment in chronic critical illness.Critical care medicine · 2009Article
- The Right to Die in Chronic Disorders of Consciousness: Can We Avoid the Slippery Slope Argument?Innovations in clinical neuroscienceReview
- Pediatric Resident Experience Caring for Children at the End of Life in a Children's Hospital.Academic pediatricsArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The right to refuse medical intervention is well established, but it remains unclear how best to respect and exercise this right in life support. Contemporary ethical guidelines for critical care give ambiguous advice, largely because they focus on the moral equivalence of withdrawing and withholding care without confronting the very real differences regarding who is aware and informed of intervention options and how patient values are communicated and enacted. In withholding care, doctors typically withhold information about interventions judged too futile to offer. They thus retain greater decision-making burden (and power) and face weaker obligations to secure consent from patients or proxies. In withdrawing care, there is a clearer imperative for the doctor to include patients (or proxies) in decisions, share information and secure consent, even when continued life support is deemed futile. How decisions to withhold and withdraw life support differ ethically in their implications for positive versus negative interpretations of patient autonomy, imperatives for consent, definitions of futility and the subjective evaluation of (and submission to) benefits and burdens of life support in critical care settings are explored. Professional reflection is required to respond to trends favouring a more positive interpretation of patient autonomy in the context of life support decisions in critical care. Both the bioethics and critical care communities should investigate the possibilities and limits of growing pressure for doctors to disclose their reasoning or seek patient consent when decisions to withhold life support are made.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.