Do doctors really withdraw life support prematurely for patients with brain injuries?
Researchers accuse ICU doctors of ‘therapeutic nihilism’.
Medicine is about life and death, a fact starkest when doctors advise families to end life support for a loved one.
These decisions are routine for patients with acute brain injuries (ABIs): ischaemic strokes, intracranial haemorrhages, seizures, brain trauma or meningitis–encephalitis.
Professor Jamie Cooper says these conversations are part of the job, yet still tough after his 30 years as an intensive care physician at Alfred Health in Melbourne.
He said families often believed their loved ones would want life support stopped but struggled to separate this conclusion from their emotions.
