Death as an option in neonatal intensive care

Many paediatricians believe that there are circumstances in which infants should be allowed to die without having their lives prolonged by intensive care or surgery. During a four-year period, in a regional neonatal intensive-care unit, 75 infants were so seriously ill that withdrawal of treatment was discussed. 26 infants had severe acquired neurological damage, 26 had been born after extremely short gestation (25 weeks or less), and 23 had severe congenital abnormalities. The decision to withdraw treatment from a particular infant had to be unanimous among all the medical and nursing staff caring for that child and was based on a virtual certainty, not just of handicap, but of total incapacity--eg, microcephaly, spastic quadriplegia, and blindness. Of the 75 infants, the decision of the medical team was to withdraw treatment from 51. The parents of 47 infants accepted the decision and all these infants died. The parents of 4 infants chose continued intensive care, and 2 infants survived with disabilities. In the other 24 cases, the medical decision was to continue treatment. Of these, 17 survived and 7 died. When a thorough medical assessment had led to unanimous agreement among staff and parents that treatment should be withdrawn, its continuation on purely legal grounds is not justifiable.