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Home » Consumer Information

Life Support

Life support refers to the medical expertise and equipment vital to keeping a single person alive or to maintaining living conditions for a group of people in a place where their bodies cannot survive without assistance. Locales fitting this description include submarines, airplanes, and spacecrafts. In medical terms, life support involves whatever means necessary to keep a patient alive that would otherwise die without any aid. Here are some examples of life support:

  • Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
  • Feeding tubes
  • Intravenous fluids (IV)
  • Mechanical respiration
  • Heart and lung bypass instruments
  • Defibrillators
  • Renal dialysis

Someone in need of life support is almost always unconscious.

A patient who requires life support could have endured a traumatic event such as an auto accident, crippling stroke or heart attack, or some other essential organ failure. Certain people have a strong stance in regards to life support and opt for the "do not resuscitate" option instead. This means that if a person is unable to continue living on their own that they should not be revived and should die naturally. Occasionally, life support is only needed for a brief period of time before a person's body can support itself again. However, there are other instances where life support could be used for years if a person is in a comatose state. Cases like these are often very hard on families; they can cause a bone of contention among various members who disagree whether or not the patient should be left on life support with the prospect of someday returning to health. The choice to terminate life support is commonly phrased as "pulling the plug."

A unique environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) has been designed by NASA to eventually be used in space stations. The ECLSS is comprised of special technology that controls oxygen and water supplies, stabilizes air pressure, and monitors air temperature. There are devices to rid the air of carbon dioxide and other harmful gases along with hazardous particles and microorganisms. Life support systems that can be found on earth to manage conditions unsuitable for sustaining human life are installed on commercial airplanes, submarines, and other means of transportation.