What is considered life support?

Is a feeding tube considered life support?

Life Support is just that. It is any thing that a person needs to keep them living if they are unable to eat or breathe on their own.
If removing the feeding tube or taking a person off a ventilator or c-pap would directly cause them to die, then it is life support.

Some people can have a feeding tube for supplemental feeding because for whatever reason, they are not able to eat enough through their mouth. In such a case, this is NOT life support.

Remember Terri Shiavo? She was basically in a vegetative state and the ONLY thing keeping her alive was her feeding tube. Her husband knew she would not have wanted to live like that, so he fought to have her tube removed. Once he won the battle against her parents to take out the tube, she lived for less than 2 weeks before she died.

Other forms of life support are ventilators and C-pap which breathe FOR a person. Some people are put on ventilators for various reasons and they are NOT considered life support. If a person is put on a ventilator to offer them a chance to get over a nasty pneumonia, this is not considered life support. It becomes life support when they cannot wean a person off a ventilator so they can breathe on their own. When my Mother was put on a vent she was in severe respiratory distress from a pneumonia but not arrest. The vent was a way to ease the stress of breathing so her body could heal. Unfortunately, she took a bad turn and they could no longer take her off the vent because she was no longer breathing on her own. NOW, the vent was life support and this she did not want. She agreed to the vent on her own in the beginning knowing my Sister and I knew when to say "no more".

Many people disagree about what is and what is not life support.

I hope this helps you.

to some extent i would say that it is.

you could take it as far as they could starve to death,

moslty machines that keep you breathing and your heart beating are considerd life support

Life support consists mainly of oxygen and yes a feeding tube inserted into the stomach is supportive of maintaining the daily caloric needs.

In my opinion yes. A feeding tube is considered life support. Life support is anything that artificially helps maintain life in a person. And a person can not live without food.

Yes, as is a ventilator.

Anything that keeps your body alive. You will die if they remove it.. so it could be feeding tubes, machines, heart pumps etc.

When they talk about life support on the news or tv they usually mean mechanical devices though.

Sort of But not really,
Oxygen and machines that keep your heart going are considered life support.