Does compassion for a family justify providing futile CPR?

摘要

Robert Truog, in a provocative essay in The New England Journal of Medicine asks, 'Is it always wrong to perform futile cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)?' His answer is 'No.'2 Not because, as he argued in an earlier article,3 there is no consensus on the meaning of futility-here he describes the patient as a 'chalky and lifeless' neurologically devastated 2-year-old boy who 'might already be dead'-but because some families do not share the vision of a 'good death' as one in which the patient slips peacefully from life to death. Rather, they want 'everything' attempted until, despite all the heroic techniques modern medicine can provide, the patient goes, not gently, but battered and bruised, into that good night.