What does that mean if a person is on life support?

Does that mean that he/she is dead? My friend is crying because a guy she used to work with is in th hospital & on life support. & how long if you're on life support before you actually die? & if you ARE already dead if you're on life support, why is there such thing? Why can't they just let you die? & not suffer anymore.

This man looked very skinny & was walking wobbly & couldn't keep his balance. I know he drinks a lot & has liver problems. & also he's a heavy smoker. Should we say farewell & RIP already? He's a very mean-spirited guy, but I will miss him.

Life support means that the person could not sustain life on his own without the help of one or more machine. It does not necessarily mean that he is already dead; though someone CAN be brain dead but kept alive on life support.

Sometimes the hospital does not mean to NOT let someone die in peace. Many times they think they can save someone with temporary help and it turns out that by taking him off the machine it would kill him.

An example was that my father was able to breathe on his own but he was so ill, they put in a tube and machine to breathe for him in order to let his body rest. They didn't want him to work so hard to breathe. This worked and then he got better and the tube and machine was removed. Months later when he was much iller and it was at the end of his life, he said no machines because he knew he would never come off of them. There is a time and place for everything.

Life support is a machine keeping you alive. As long as your hooked up to it. It will "breathe and pump your blood even" as long as it has power. When taken off, the body attached will die sooner or later.

Life support usually means one or two of the major organs or kungs have stopped working on their own. Technically the person is not dead if the machine is breathing for him but his heart is good or vice versa, but in some cases people do not recover from it. He is not dead yet but I'm betting he is in ICU and you wouldn't be able to see him (only family) so you need not worry about saying goodbye in person. Please don't send him off ahead of his time. And in answer to the one statement, life support is decided by the doctors and family (and the person is not always suffering) and will be withdrawn when they decide to do so. You're not dead when you go on it, you're failing, and the machines help you fight. He will pass away when it's time.

Life support is given to a patient when one or more of the vital organs is failing in the body. In this case, it's the liver. The overall condition of the body is the telling factor in whether the patient will survive or not. Usually patients in critical condition have a low chance of survival, and patients in stable condition have a high chance of survival. If the patient chooses to end life support, relatives and others must cope with the decision. However, if the patient is not well enough to choose, then another person must make this choice. One has to consider all these factors when a patient is on life support.

In my general experience....If you are on life support it's usually the being of the end. If you need a machine to help you breath and an IV to provide some type of nourishment all the while, you are totally unconscious to me this is not living. (At least, I would not want to be kept alive under those circumstances)

"if you ARE already dead if you're on life support, why is there such thing?"

You're going to receive a lot of different answers to this question. I don't really have a good answer for you but I think that a lot of it depends on the family's of the wounded personal values.