1. Tough Decisions for Premature Triplets.
- Author
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Hurst A, Vergales BD, Paget-Brown A, Mercurio M, and Lantos JD
- Subjects
- Decision Making ethics, Female, Fetal Viability, Gestational Age, Humans, Infant, Newborn, Infant, Premature, Male, Palliative Care ethics, Parents, Resuscitation, Ethics Consultation, Infant, Extremely Low Birth Weight, Intensive Care, Neonatal ethics, Triplets, Withholding Treatment ethics
- Abstract
When infants are born at the borderline of viability, doctors and parents have to make tough decisions about whether to institute intensive care or provide only palliative care. Often, these decisions are made in moments of profound emotional turmoil, and parents receive different information from different health professionals. Communication can become garbled. It may be difficult to tell when and whether the patient's clinical condition has changed enough so that certain choices that had once been permissible become impermissible. In this "Ethics Rounds," we present a case of triplets born at the borderline of viability. We sought comments from the triplets' parents, the doctors and ethicist who were caring for the infants, and a bioethicist/neonatologist from another hospital., (Copyright © 2016 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.)
- Published
- 2016
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