What are the futile treatments in medical care delivery?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some argued that clinicians could terminate futile treatments. Unfortunately, the term futility has been used inconsistently. Physiologic futility means that an intervention will have no physiologic effect. • Qualitative futility refers to an intervention that fails to end a patient’s total dependence on intensive medical care. • Quantitative futility occurs when physicians conclude (either through personal experience, experiences shared with colleagues, or consideration of reported empiric data) that in the last 100 cases, a medical treatment has been useless. Generally, it is now agreed that there is no objective standard of futility; the term merely conceals subjective value judgments about when a treatment is “not beneficial.” Some hospitals have enacted “unilateral DNR” policies to allow clinicians to provide a do–not–resuscitate order in cases where consensus cannot be reached with families and there is medical opinion that resuscitation would b
