Abstract
An adolescent’s last moment of life is an emotionally and medically complex time. Children may grapple with understanding the things happening to them and with grief of a future lost; caregivers struggle to simultaneously balance deep sorrow, hope, and love; and healthcare providers fight to maintain sound medical and ethical decision making. Increased discussion regarding adolescent end-of-life care is needed so that clinicians may better understand how to engage in ethically based medical management during these events. This holds particularly true in situations where potentially conflicting ideas exist between clinicians and family members. We describe the case of an acutely and terminally ill adolescent who remained cognitively intact but with rapidly advancing multiple organ failure and whose parents requested that he remain uninformed of his critical illness and prognosis.
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Manuscript conception and design were undertaken by Grant Goodrich, Shelly Ozark, Joshua Arenth and Mariah Tanious. Literature search and material preparation were performed by Grant Goodrich, Shelly Ozark and Mariah Tanious. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Grant Goodrich and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Revision and reformatting were performed by Virginia Pedigo. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Tanious, M.K., Goodrich, G., Pedigo, V. et al. Prognostic Disclosure to Dying Adolescents Against Parental Wishes: A Point-Counter Point Debate. HEC Forum (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-024-09526-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-024-09526-5