Life support
This article is about life support in medicine. There is another article on life support and environmental control.
Life support is a term for a set of therapies to preserve a patient's life when essential bodily systems are not working well enough to be relied upon. Life support therapies utilize some combination of several techniques: enteric feeding, intravenous drips,total parenteral nutrition, mechanical respiration, heart/lung bypass, defibrillation, urinary catheterization and dialysis. The same techniques are also used for intensive care, though life support is concerned with stabilizing a patient rather than healing them.
In some cases, skilled nursing care can substitute for one of the above radical therapies, and is almost always preferable if it can be relied-upon. For example, some hospitals routinely train nurses to attach oxygen equipment to a patient's preferred breathing orifice, while others limit it to a nose cannula — the cannula is safer from fire than a tent and requires less care than a mask.
In general, enteric feeding ("tube feeding") is preferable to total parenteral nutrition. Urinary catheterization is preferable to dialysis. Mechanical ventilation or defibrillation are preferable to cardiac bypass, and can sometimes sustitute for it.
See also
Referenced By
Alive | Biological life | Life | Living | Living Beings | Mechanical ventilation
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