Extraordinary nutritional support: a case study and ethical analysis.

Ethical issues surrounding decisions to limit treatment often focus on dramatic and highly technical interventions, such as mechanical ventilation. Many less dramatic forms of therapy are considered routine, and ethical aspects of their use may be less closely examined. Nutritional support can be crucially important in elderly patients, especially the very frail. Yet, appropriate use of nutritional therapy must consider the circumstances of an individual patient. Where severe underlying illness cannot be reversed, technical means of providing nutrition can represent extraordinary rather than ordinary means of prolonging life. The following case examines the ethical issues in respecting the apparent refusal of nutritional support by a severely debilitated geriatric patient.