Since its introduction in the 1980s, futility as a concept has held contested meaning and
applications throughout medicine. There has been little discussion within the psychiatric …

Background Treatment futility and terminality discussions arise rarely in psychiatric practice,
frequently instilling apprehension, as there is little written that defines these terms in relation …

The thesis of Dr. Geppert's target article (2015) is that “futility” in psychiatry is a concept
whose time has not yet come. As Helft and colleagues (2000) observed in their essay on …

The futility debate may be considered as an effort to provide a clear and justified borderline
between physician and patient decision–making authority. In this paper we argue that the …

E806 CMAJ| JUNE 12, 2017| VOLUME 189| ISSUE 23 respect to those whose probability is
clearly zero. Therefore, any reference to futility other than true physiologic futility is not really …

The claim that a treatment is futile is often used to justify a shift in the physician's ethical
obligations to patients. In clinical situations in which non-futile treatments are available, the …

1. Are there medical interventions in a specific patient with a particular disease that we can
label futile or useless because we are sufficiently confident that they will not be beneficial …

The thesis I want to set forth in this commentary is as follows: The term futility is in a parlous
state suffering from vagueness in definition, clinically unpleasant connotations, and intense …

Futility has had a rough time in recent medical ethics literature. From about 1987 to 1996,
various writers and groups tried to define futility within the context of medical treatment, but …

In his essay “The Futility Debate and the Management of Gordian Knots,” Bruce Zawacki
provides an enlightened road map for finding our way out of the conceptual morass that this …