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Related Experiment Videos

Triage in the ICU.

R D Truog1

  • 1NICU, Children's Hospital, Boston, Mass.

The Hastings Center Report
|May 1, 1992
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Intensive care units (ICUs) should ethically reallocate scarce resources. Patients too sick or too well to benefit may have care withdrawn to help those who can gain more from ICU interventions.

Keywords:
Health Care and Public Health

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Area of Science:

  • Critical Care Medicine
  • Medical Ethics

Background:

  • Intensive care units (ICUs) face resource limitations.
  • Patient acuity varies significantly within ICUs.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore the ethical considerations of resource allocation in ICUs.
  • To determine criteria for withdrawing ICU care.

Main Methods:

  • Ethical analysis of resource allocation principles.
  • Review of clinical scenarios in intensive care.

Main Results:

  • Patients too ill to benefit do not warrant continued intensive care.
  • Patients well enough to not need intensive care also do not warrant resource use.

Conclusions:

  • Ethical withdrawal of ICU care is justifiable for patients unlikely to benefit.
  • Resource reallocation can improve outcomes for critically ill patients.