Ethical Principles in End-of-Life Care

Abstract

Optimizing comfort care for critically ill patients during the terminal stage according to patient and family’s wishes is an obligation for all critical care physicians. With increasing complexity of organ support, increasing age, and multiple comorbidities of critically ill patients, prolonged life-sustaining treatment is very commonly observed in modern ICU care. Limitations of such treatment in selected individuals need to be realized early, and clinical skills need to be developed for managing end-of-life (EOL) issues in these patients.