This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. Please help recruit one or improve this article yourself. See the talk page for details. Please consider using {{Expert-subject}} to associate this request with a WikiProject

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

Life support, in the medical field, refers to a set of therapies for preserving a patient's life when essential body systems are not functioning sufficiently to sustain life unaided. Life support therapies utilize some combination of several techniques: feeding tubes, intravenous drips, total parenteral nutrition, mechanical respiration, heart/lung bypass, urinary catheterization and dialysis. The same techniques are also used for intensive care or in some cases during surgery, though life support is employed to stabilize a patient and is typically not sufficient to allow full recovery from their condition. The term life support can have more than one meaning: The main use of the term life support is in medicine In the aviation/air force-related sense, see life support (aviation) For the use of the term life support in technology, see life-critical system For the Australian comedy... Image File history File links Emblem-important. ... Image File history File links Gnome-globe. ... Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... A feeding tube is a medical device used to provide nutrition to patients who cannot or refuse to (q. ... An intravenous drip in a hospital Intravenous therapy or IV therapy is the administration of liquid substances directly into a vein. ... Total parenteral nutrition (TPN), is the practice of feeding a person intravenously, circumventing the gut. ... see Mechanical ventilation (disambiguation) for other meanings. ... A cardiac pump or cardiac bypass pump or heart-lung machine temporarily takes over the function of breathing and pumping blood for a patient. ... In urinary catheterization, a urinary catheter (such as a Foley catheter) is a plastic tube which is either inserted through a patients urinary tract into their bladder or attached to a male patients penis. ... In medicine, dialysis is a type of renal replacement therapy which is used to provide an artificial replacement for lost kidney function due to renal failure. ... “Intensive Care” redirects here. ... “Surgeon” redirects here. ...

Ethics

It has been proposed that the practice of artificially prolonging the life of an individual who will not recover to be unethical. Roman Catholic moral teachings, pronounced in 1993, suggest that the employment of artificial means is not necessary to fulfill the duty to respect life; however the term "artificial means" may vary in meaning between different schools of thought within and outside Catholicism. Most Catholic theologians however, divide the issue into "ordinary" and "extraordinary" means, and believe that it is an ethical imperative to continue the ordinary means, but ethically neutral to withhold the extraordinary means. They define ordinary means as things like feeding, and extraordinary means as things like artificial breathing. Also you could say that it is illegal in some states. Medical ethics is primarily a field of applied ethics, the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to medicine. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ...

by:college professors

See also

• Basic life support
• Advanced cardiac life support
• Uniform Rights of the Terminally Ill Act