The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
Carmen Black Parker, MD, Amanda Calhoun, MD, MPH, Ambrose H. Wong, MD, MSEd, Larry Davidson, PhD, and Charles Dike, MBChB, MPH
Psychiatric emergencies, coping stress reactions, and iatrogenic injuries are not responded to with the same vigor as acute medical decompensation. That needs to change.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(11):E956-964. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.956.
Neutral, nondirective counseling of women who are about to give birth to extremely premature infants can undermine their autonomous decision making rather than promoting it.
When evaluating the developments and complications of a marginally viable premature infant, physicians and parents must work together to decide on treatment that is in the infant’s best interest.
Catherine A. Marco, MD and Raquel M. Schears, MD, MPH
Two physicians offer commentaries about how an ED physician should communicate the decision to withhold CPR to the patient's family, especially in light of often unrealistic beneficial outcomes portrayed by medical dramas and the media.