Futile therapy - definitional problems

Abstract

In my article, I discuss the definitional challenges concerning the concept of futile therapy and review and evaluate the strategies and definitional proposals that have appeared in the literature. Difficulties in adequately defining the concept of futile therapy are typical of the definitional problems encountered in defining medical notions, especially in relation to end-of-life procedures, where we are faced with a field of inadequately defined concepts with overlapping meanings and scopes. In addition to futile therapy, this conceptual field consists of ‘ordinary’ (proportionate) and ‘extraordinary’ (disproportionate) means, as well as the concept of the patient's best interests. In the Polish medical literature, this picture is further complicated by the use of the term ‘overzealous therapy’.