Definition of Life Support

When the human body ceases to perform normal life-sustaining functions, such as drawing a breath or maintaining a heart rhythm, a doctor may order the use of life support equipment to temporarily take over the job. These fundamental body tasks include respiration and nutrition, supplemented by a mechanical ventilator and a feeding tube.

Benefits

• Life support is valuable to patients who have a chance to recover from trauma or a severe illness. Ventilators, catheters and heart defibrillators perform imperative bodily functions until the patient can resume these functions by himself. In this manner, a patient who would have died receives another chance to live.

Function

• Life support is a bridge that sustains human life until the body can, once again, sustain itself. Although commonly used for trauma patients who suffer from an injury or a medical condition that causes their body to cease functioning, it is also beneficial during some surgeries, when a patient is deeply sedated.

Types

• A ventilator or a mechanical respirator is the most common piece equipment used as life support. The patient must have a heartbeat in order to benefit from an artificial breathing machine. In some cases, a heart defibrillator, inserted in the chest, sends an electrical pulse into the heart, should it cease beating. Two other types of life support sustain urinary function and nutritional intake by means of catheters and feeding tubes.

Potential

• Because life support measures supply oxygen to the brain and other organs, an otherwise healthy patient may return to a normal life after his body heals from a trauma or medical condition. The potential to save lives is the ultimate goal of life support measure.

Misconceptions

• Basic Life Support (BLS) is different in the sense that it denotes the emergency means of sustaining life in a trauma situation and a patient will usually receive this type of treatment before he enters a hospital. Emergency personnel, or people trained in CPR, most often perform BLS to a patient who has no heartbeat or is not breathing. BLS is also the first course of action for drowning victims.

Prevention/Solution

• Controversy over the wisdom of using life support measures to sustain life in patients who show no chance of recovery led to the implementation of the Living Will, a document signed in advance by a patient who does not want life-sustaining treatment if he has little chance of regaining a normal life. In these cases, a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order takes precedence over life support measures (see Resources below).