Medical treatment for the terminally ill: the 'risk of unacceptable badness'

doi:10.1186/cc3715

Critical Care

Volume 9
Issue 4

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This article is part of a series on End of life decision making, edited by David Crippen.

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Medical treatment for the terminally ill: the 'risk of unacceptable badness'

David Crippen

Associate Professor, Director, Neurovascular ICU, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

author email corresponding author email

Critical Care 2005, 9:317-318doi:10.1186/cc3715


Published:	10 May 2005

Abstract

When patients or their families rarely request inappropriate end of life care in the ICU for capricious reasons. End of life treatment decisions that only prolong discomfort and death are usually emotional and based on unrealistic expectations. I explore some of those reasons in this paper.