Betancourt v Trinitas and the Issue of Futility in Modern Medical Practice

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The Betancourt v. Trinitas case began with a conflict between the Betancourt family and the Trinitas Medical hospital. Rueben Betancourt is a seventy three year old man patient at the Trinitas Medical Hospital, admitted for surgery on his malignant thymoma. However after his surgery in 2008 the doctor diagnoses him with anoxic encephalopathy. Anoxic encephalopathy which is condition when the brain tissues does not receive enough oxygen to function and in Rueben case caused him to fall unconscious as well. His family than took him to various hospitals in order to provide treatment but it was unsuccessful in causing him to regain consciousness. He was readmitted to the Trinitas on July 3, 2008 with renal failure after being in a vegetative state for a year. Renal Failure is when the kidney lose their ability to filter fluids and waste causes dangerous levels to accumulate in your body. There are two types of renal failure acute and chronic. “Acute renal failure (ARF) occurs when the kidneys suddenly stop filtering waste products from the blood. Chronic renal failure (CRF) develops slowly with very few symptoms in its early stages.” Triantis Hospital began treating Rueben due this disease and put him on an artificial ventilator and gave him dialysis. Dialysis is given at the end state of renal failure but not a permanent solution. The real solution is kidney transplant but with Rueben in a vegetative state he is highly unlikely to receive one because of the shortages. The Trinitas hospital advised the Betancourt family that Rueben had lapsed into a vegetative state and suggested that taking Rueben off life support was the best action.
The daughter of Reuben Betancourt took the hospital to court in order to require the hospital to...

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...ourt to decide whether treatment should be removed from a comatose patient but rather to establish criteria that respect the right to self-determination and protect incapacitated patients.” After this decision was made that hospital started an appeal Rueben Betancourt died during the process.

Works Cited

http://www.urologyhealth.org/urology/index.cfm?article=20
Report of a working party of the Royal College of Physicians; The Vegetative State: Guidance on diagnosis and management; 2003
All information above about the court case was gathered from Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital Docket No. c-12-09
Wellman, Carl. Medical law and moral rights. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2005 pg. 185.
Betancourt v. Trinitas Regional Medical Hospital, UNN-C-12-09,
Zucker, Marjorie B., and Howard D. Zucker. Medical futility and the evaluation of life-sustaining

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