how far should doctors go to save a life?

[jpianoflorida]

I brought this up on another thread and now we have started a new thread:  how far do you go to save someones life?    who should make that decision?   if it were 100 years ago people would just die from almost anything.  Now we can prolong life , but what quality will that be?   How far do you want them to go to save your life?        I will admit I don't have the answers, not even for my own life, YET!

[wishful thinker]

Do you mean save a life (as in actively try to stop someone dying/ revive them) or prolong a life?

[jpianoflorida]

I brought this up on another thread and now we have started a new thread:  how far do you go to save someones life?    who should make that decision?   if it were 100 years ago people would just die from almost anything.  Now we can prolong life , but what quality will that be?   How far do you want them to go to save your life?        I will admit I don't have the answers, not even for my own life, YET!

thanks..yes..i should clarify   I meant to "prolong a life" or what do you think about "life support"   ..

[wishful thinker]

Well this is one of the tougher ones, of course.  There have been people that have been in a coma for many years, and suddenly wake up.   I was reading in the paper the other day, about someone who was in a coma for 3 years and woke up, and was severely brain damaged.  As I remember it, the man was having trouble sleeping and his mother gave him a dose of her sleeping pills.  He started to make a (partial) recovery and continues to do so.  I wish now that I had kept the article.

Sometimes of course people are kept alive more for the benefit of the relatives.  Very hard to say when to give up though.

[wishful thinker]

Here is the link to the article:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/21/ncoma21.xml

[berrt]

Do you mean save a life (as in actively try to stop someone dying/ revive them) or prolong a life?

Where is the difference? It will end some time for sure, prolong life is anything we can do.

B.

[pianistimo]

i think a human being can only stand so much of being cut up.  like plastic surgery - some results are great (although much more involved surgery, im sure) and some are terrible.  my aunt, for instance, went in to hospital for some benign thing - leg problem - and ended up having it get infected and then somebody dropped her moving her from one bed to another and she got another gash in her leg and that got infected.  then, staying in the hospital she got bedsores, etc. - she was in and out for a while - got better - but then suddenly had a problem and had to go back.  well, this time they did some probing around in her (pushing on her stomach or in her stomach) and the stomach was ruptured.  she had even asked them to stop (night nurses) and that what they were doing was painful.  they did not listen and continued on as if they had every right to do whatever they were doing.  she died a week later - after telling us that she had said 'no' to what they were doing.

i think it really depends on the hospital, the doctors, the nurses, what kind of care you are getting, how clean the place is, if they stand by 'consent' or they maintain their own right to deal with patients as they please.  i mean, if a patient ASKS for a heart operation -then they're accepting the risk.  but, people can die from much less than a heart operation in the hospital.  so going to a hospital for life prolongation might be the worst mistake one could make.

i think if i were about 70-80 - and in fairly good health - i'd go out in the wilderness instead.  live in a cabin.  eat healthy.  die happy.  avoid hospitals.  now - i might not say this when i get to be that age - due to medication needs - but i hope i don't have  load of pills to take.  i think that is as bad as just getting the heart attack over with and dying in a favorite chair. 

btw, recently my other aunt's husband went in for esophagus operation (to repair valve or something) and the doctor hit his spleen and it started bleeding uncontrollably and they had to REMOVE it.  now, he cannot get a temperature over 100 or he'll be right back in the hospital.  hmmm.  how often does that happen?  the doctor said that the reason this happened was that his internal organs had stuffed into the higher cavity and thus made him more risky to operate on - but that sounds really strange to me.  i'm not a doctor -obviously, but i wonder what % of people this happens to.  i think this operation is a fairly new one, though - and perhaps that is part of the problem.

i realize that doctors put themselves on the line a lot - and that having accidents is probably a certain percentage of learning to be a doctor.  but, for serious operations - they shouldn't have a 'newer doctor' doing a procedure that an older doctor can, imo.  at least have some guidance. 

[donjuan]

post deleted

[ihatepop]

"How far should doctors go to save a life?"

As far as they possibly can. Thats their job, anyway. Besides, I'd bet that every life they save makes them feel happier, and every life they lost makes them more depressed every single day.

ihatepop