Withdrawing extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) against a family's wishes: Three permissible scenarios

The ethical permissibility of unilaterally withdrawing life-sustaining technologies has been a perennial topic in transplant and critical care medicine, often focusing on CPR and mechanical ventilation. The permissibility of unilateral withdrawal of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has been discussed sparingly. When addressed, authors have appealed to professional authority rather than substantive ethical analysis. In this Perspective, we argue that there are at least three (3) scenarios wherein healthcare teams would be justified in unilaterally withdrawing ECMO, despite the objections of the patient's legal representative. The ethical considerations that provide the groundwork for these scenarios are, primarily: equity, integrity, and the moral equivalence between withholding and withdrawing medical technologies. First, we place equity in the context of crisis standards of medicine. After this, we discuss professional integrity as it relates to the innovative usage of medical technologies. Finally, we discuss the ethical consensus known at the “equivalence thesis.” Each of these considerations include a scenario and justification for unilateral withdrawal. We also provide three (3) recommendations that aim at preventing these challenges at their outset. Our conclusions and recommendations are not meant to be blunt arguments that ECMO teams wield whenever disagreement about the propriety of continued ECMO support arises. Instead, the onus will be on individual ECMO programs to evaluate these arguments and decide if they represent sensible, correct, and implementable starting points for clinical practice guidelines or policies.