Abstract:Supportive Palliative Care and Hospice professionals frequently attend to Minimally Conscious State (MCS) patients near the end of life and in so doing, face decisions over maintenance or withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration. Although both withholding and withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) in such circumstances are considered by experts in ethics and law to be acceptable, not all families nor health care professionals agree. This paper will explore basic aspects of serious brain… Show more
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.