What is Life Support?
Life support refers either to medical intervention used to sustain an individual’s life or to specialized equipment that provides appropriate environmental conditions to sustain many lives, such as in a submarine, airplane, or space craft. In a medical situation, life support involves any number of medical techniques and paraphernalia used to keep a person alive if he is unable to survive on his own. Some examples of life support include cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), feeding tubes, intravenous fluids, mechanical respiration, heart and lung bypass instruments, defibrillation equipment, and renal dialysis. In most cases, a person who requires life support is unconscious. A person in need of life support may have suffered a serious traumatic injury, such as a car accident, a debilitating stroke or heart attack, or any number of vital organ failures. Some people feel very strongly against the use of life support and issue a do not resuscitate (DNR) order. Sometimes, life support is
