“High Tech” medicine, excessive therapy and undignified death

• Autor(a) principal: Lima, Cristina
• Data de Publicação: 2006
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://revista.spmi.pt/index.php/rpmi/article/view/1629
• topic: Ética; Distanasia; Obstinação terapêutica; Ethics; Undignified Death; Therapeutic futility

Hipocratic medicine already had as objectives, not only to cure but also to relieve suffering, condemning at the same time, obviously pointless treatment.In the latter half of the 20th century the health of the individual has become a kind of religion in which the use of high technology is not always adjusted to the patient who is nearing the end of life but keeps being submitted to treatments to prolong it, transforming the final stages of life into an agonising dying process. This is always associated with therapeutic futility including the trend to defi ne the extent of treatment according to available resources.The article concludes that it is necessary to recover the objectives of Hipocratic medicine which place value on the person, their values and choices; to recognize when curative medicine should be replaced by palliative.The article ends by drawing attention to Portugal and the guidelines issued in 1995 by the Conselho Nacional de Ética (National Council of Ethics) para as Ciencias da vida about the ethical aspects of health care related to the end of life.