Was the UK collaborative ECMO trial ethical?

Decision-Making, Ethics, and End-of-Life Care in Pediatric Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: A Comprehensive Narrative Review

OBJECTIVES

Pediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. We sought to summarize literature on communication and decision-making, end-of-life care, and ethical issues to identify recommended approaches and highlight knowledge gaps.

DATA SOURCES

PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library.

STUDY SELECTION

We reviewed published articles (1972-2020) which examined three pediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation domains: 1) decision-making or communication between clinicians and patients/families, 2) ethical issues, or 3) end-of-life care.

DATA EXTRACTION

Two reviewers independently assessed eligibility using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses methodology.

DATA SYNTHESIS

Of 2,581 publications screened, we identified one systematic review and 35 descriptive studies. No practical guides exist for communication and decision-making in pediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Conversation principles and parent/clinician perspectives are described. Ethical issues related to consent, initiation, discontinuation, resource allocation, and research. No patient-level synthesis of ethical issues or end-of-life care in pediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was identified.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite numerous ethical issues reported surrounding pediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, we found limited patient-level research and no practical guides for communicating with families or managing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation discontinuation.

Rationing potentially inappropriate treatment in newborn intensive care in developed countries

In newborn intensive care, parents sometimes request treatment that professionals regard as 'futile' or 'potentially inappropriate'. One reason not to provide potentially inappropriate treatment is because it would be excessively costly relative to its benefit. Some public health systems around the world assess the cost-effectiveness of treatments and selectively fund those treatments that fall within a set threshold. This article explores the application of such thresholds to questions in newborn intensive care: (i) when a newborn infant's chance of survival is too small; (ii) how long treatment should continue; (iii) when quality of life is too low; and (iv) when newborn infants are too premature for cost-effective intensive care. This analysis yields some potentially surprising conclusions. Newborn intensive care may be cost-effective even in the setting of very low probability of survival, very poor predicted quality of life, for protracted periods of time, or for the most premature of newborns.

Clinical Research in Acute Fatal Illness

Clinical research to evaluate the effectiveness of life support systems in acute fatal illness has unique problems of logistics, ethics, and consent. There have been 10 prospective comparative trials of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in acute fatal respiratory failure, utilizing different study designs. The trial designs were prospective controlled randomized, prospective adaptive randomized, sequential, and matched pairs. The trials were reviewed with regard to logistics, ethics, consent, statistical methods, economics, and impact. The matched pairs method is the best study design for evaluation of life support systems in acute fatal illness.

Use of extracorporeal life support in adults with severe acute respiratory failure

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a recognized and accepted therapeutic option in the treatment of neonatal and pediatric respiratory failure. However, early studies in adults did not demonstrate a survival benefit associated with the utilization of ECMO for severe acute respiratory failure. Despite this historical lack of benefit, use of ECMO in adult patients has seen a recent resurgence. Local successes and a recently published randomized trial have both demonstrated promising results in an adult population with high baseline mortality and limited therapeutic options. This article will review the history of ECMO use for respiratory failure; investigate the driving forces behind the latest surge in interest in ECMO for adults with refractory severe acute respiratory failure; and describe potential applications of ECMO that will likely increase in the near future.

Clinical trials in neonates: ethical issues

If neonates are to receive the best possible treatment, they must be involved in clinical trials. However, doing such trials raises complicated ethical issues. These issues are not unique to neonatology but some are more common or acute than in other areas of medicine. In practice, two particular issues -- equipoise and informed consent -- arise as many different types of problem. The question 'What is an ethical issue?' is important because issues that are not ethical are sometimes mistakenly thought to be so, and vice versa. When we can recognize what types of problem are ethical, we can also recognize the correct means to tackle them.

Adaptive designs, informed consent, and the ethics of research

The ethical tension in research design is often characterized as that between individual and collective ethics. While adaptive clinical trials (ACTs) are generally considered to be more sensitive to individual ethics, the concomitant loss of statistical power associated with them is often used to justify randomized clinical trials (RCTs). This paper challenges this characterization of the central ethical problem in research design. It argues that the key consideration in clinical research hinges on the process of informed consent. When the research context is such that the subject is able to provide informed consent, RCTs can be justified and may be required. However, in desperate medical situations the process of informed consent is often undermined. It is argued that in such situations ACTs are ethically required. We introduce "the principle of interchangeability" and argue that it must be satisfied if research in desperate medical situations is to be justified.