LIMITING AND GIVING UP TREATMENTS IN INTE NSIVE-CARE MEDICINE - A LEGAL POINT-OF-VIEW

A physician engaged in intensive care medicine is expected to meet an extremely high degree of decisiveness and responsibility, not only wit h regard to medical questions but also in view to ethical and juridica l problems which might emerge. It is above all the intensive therapy w hich had contributed to find out the answer of sense and aim of medica l activity to be not merely the prolongation of life. On the contrary: the main task of any medical intervention is to pay respect to the hu manitarian principle of offering the patient optimal help. What optima l help means in this extreme situation between life and death, prolong ation of life or help to terminate life, cannot be decided merely from an objective medical point of view but must be judged, above all, fro m the patient's very subjective view and his/her individual physical, psychological and social situation.