Medical futility.

Today's Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call has a long, well-written article on medical futility. The author, Ann Wlazelek notes that

a national turnabout in medical ethics, one in which doctors no longer want to employ all that medical science has to offer to keep patients alive and families find themselves fighting for their loved ones' right to live.

It's a shift in thinking that evolved in the past decade from the realization that it may be more humane to comfort than to try to cure patients near the end of life.

Backed by court orders and medical ethicists, hospitals have adopted little-known policies that declare ''doctors know best'' in deciding when to withhold or withdraw potentially life-saving treatments. As a result, a patient's final wishes may not be carried out, even when dictated in a living will or other legal document.

''Years ago, it was the physician who wouldn't stop. Now, it's the opposite: The doctor wants to give up and the family doesn't,'' said Dr. Joseph Vincent, an internist and founding member and chairman of the medical ethics committee at Lehigh Valley Hospital.

Most times, doctors and families concur about end-of-life treatments such as resuscitation, ventilators and feeding tubes. But when they don't, relations can get nasty. Relatives who persist in their protest can find themselves confronted by security guards, out-of-pocket medical bills and court petitions for guardianship.

The turnabout has taken place over the past 10 years. Patients began losing trust in their physicians when health maintenance organizations paid doctors to restrict access to expensive specialists and tests. Also, studies proved the most advanced technology and medicines cannot always keep patients alive but can cause them harm. The example cited most often is the risk of breaking ribs or causing nerve damage when performing chest compressions during CPR.

The article discusses a hospital policy adopted at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg:

"If all of these steps are taken and the family remains unconvinced, neither the doctor nor the hospital are required to provide care that is not medically indicated, and the family may seek a substitute physican (if one can be found) and another hospital (if available). The Lehigh Valley Hospital will assist the family in their efforts to find those substitutes."

Stephen E. Lammers, a professor of religious studies at Lafayette College, said he helped Vincent draft LVH's guidelines as "a way of signaling to everyone that the insistence upon continued treatment went beyond accepted medical practice."

The difficulty with the guidelines is illustrated by the article's discussion of a heart-attack victim as to whom continued aggressive treatment was thought to be futile by the attending physicians, nurses, technicians, social workers, and a chaplain. Despite the hospital's policy, aggressive therapy was continued until the day the patient was transferred to another facility; she died the following day.

Under LVH's guidelines, when the family and medical staff cannot reach consensus, one of four things can happen: The medical staff concedes to the family's wishes and continues to treat aggressively; care is transferred to another doctor or medical facility, as in the Jandras case; a local judge or court is consulted; or the doctor refuses to treat the patient.

Vincent said the last option to refuse treatment ''takes courage'' on the part of the physician because he or she will most likely be sued. No doctor at LVH has refused to treat a patient, he said, but some patients have been transferred to other facilities.

The Lehigh Valley problem -- the dark cloud of legal liability -- has been addressed in Texas. Under the Texas Health & Safety Code § 166.046, a physician, other health care professional, or hospital that refuses treatment deemed not to be beneficial to the patient, including "futile" care, is immune from criminal liability, civil liability, or professional discipline, as long as all of the elements of the law's "due process" provisions are followed, include a mandatory ethics committee consultation and reasonable attempts to transfer the patient to another provider or facility if the family and health care team continue to be at an impasse.

The mandatory ethics consultation is a unique feature of the Texas law that was the first of its kind in the country and, to my knowledge, remains the only one. The newspaper article addresses the potential utility of ethics consultations:

Despite the shift in medical ethics, many relatives resolve their differences with doctors at LVH through the hospital ethics committee.

One satisfied consumer, Erica Robbins of West Chester, said the committee eased tension between a doctor and the family regarding her elderly aunt's need for a breathing machine and related surgery.

The specialist initially had told Robbins he would not recommend putting 91-year-old Olga Katz of Bethlehem on a ventilator because she had congestive heart failure and probably would not survive her hospital stay.

"I felt insulted that someone who had just met her 20 minutes earlier would make a decision about what she wanted," Robbins said.

At the same time, she didn't want to make the decision on her own, so Robbins and her family consulted two rabbis and researched Jewish law in Israel. The law said ventilate.

Robbins lauded the ethics committee for allowing her, her husband and sister-in-law to speak about Katz as the vibrant person and Holocaust survivor that she was. Katz eventually left the hospital, Robbins said, and lived another six months.

This vignette illustrates another often misunderstood feature of hospital ethics committees: Any committee worth its salt will be just as open to the family in a futility dispute as to the treatment team, and when the case for "futility" just hasn't been made, ethics committees will recommend continued treatment.

The full article covers many important points and is well worth checking out.