Structured Summary
Abstract
Withholding or withdrawal of a particular treatment or treatments, often (but not necessarily) life-prolonging treatment, from a patient or from a research subject as part of a research protocol. The concept is differentiated from REFUSAL TO TREAT, where the emphasis is on the health professional's or health facility's refusal to treat a patient or group of patients when the patient or the patient's representative requests treatment. Withholding of life-prolonging treatment is usually indexed only with EUTHANASIA, PASSIVE, unless the distinction between withholding and withdrawing treatment, or the issue of withholding palliative rather than curative treatment, is discussed.
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Synonyms
12 entry terms
- Cessation of Treatment
- Treatment Cessation
- Treatment Cessations
- Treatment, Withholding
- Treatments, Withholding
- Withholding Treatments
- Withdrawing Care
- Withdrawing Treatment
- Care, Withdrawing
- Treatment, Withdrawing
- Treatments, Withdrawing
- Withdrawing Treatments
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Aspects Covered
7 allowable subheadings
Indexed with the subheadings economics, ethics, history, legislation & jurisprudence, standards, statistics & numerical data, trends.
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Indexing Annotation
human only; EUTHANASIA, PASSIVE: do not coord with WITHHOLDING TREATMENT unless particularly discussed
MeSH Record
History Note
2002; for WITHDRAWING CARE use EUTHANASIA, PASSIVE 1999-2001
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References
- National Library of Medicine. Withholding Treatment. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). 2026. Unique ID D028761. http://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2026/D028761
- Withholding Treatment. In: Wikidata. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q70444318