adj. describing an intervention with little or no prospect of achieving its aim or intended purpose, often used to justify withholding or withdrawing medical treatment at the end of life. Claims that treatment is futile may be controversial because of the inherent uncertainty of prognoses, value judgments about quality of life, and contested therapeutic aims. Intensive care, for example, cannot be said to be futile simply on the grounds that the patient is unlikely to regain full health, since restoration of full health was never the intended purpose. —futility n.
Treatment that is usually considered unable to produce the desired benefit either because it cannot achieve its physiological aim or because the burdens of the treatment are considered to outweigh the benefits for the particular individual. There are necessary value judgements involved in coming to an assessment of futility. These judgements must consider the individual’s, or proxy’s, assessment of worthwhile outcome. They should also take into account the medical practitioner or other provider’s perception of intent in treatment. They may also take into account community and institutional standards, which in turn may have used physiological or functional outcome measures.... futile medical treatment
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