A team of public hospital doctors has been accused of acting unethically by conducting an hour of resuscitation on a woman they knew was beyond help. The patient's family complained to the Hospital Authority that the doctors had tried to fool them into believing the patient was still alive after an operation went wrong. The family also accused the team of making up the patient's time of death, which might have implications for future legal action. The South China Morning Post has learned that an intensive care unit doctor who took over the case from the surgery team admitted doctors continued resuscitation 'for the sake of letting the patient's relatives accept the scenario'. The authority's public complaints committee ruled in its Thursday meeting that it was inappropriate for the doctors to conduct prolonged and unnecessary resuscitation on a patient they believed to be dead. The committee has asked the Hospital Authority's ethics committee to look into the issue of unnecessary resuscitation and consider guidelines on 'how enough will be enough' in saving a life. It is understood some public complaints committee members were outraged by the incident. Sources said there were no clinical indicators for the doctors to conduct resuscitation. 'There is an important ethical issue behind the question of when a doctor should stop the resuscitation. Where should the line be drawn?' a source close to the investigation said. 'There should be an open discussion about this and the authority should also issue guidelines to all medical staff.' The patient underwent an emergency operation for duodenal perforation at the hospital last year. She suffered a cardiac arrest in the operating theatre 30 to 40 minutes before she was transferred to the intensive care unit. She did not respond to cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the theatre. In order to let the relatives 'accept the scenario', the doctors transferred the woman to the intensive care unit where another hour of resuscitation was given, even though she already had 'fixed and dilated' pupils - an indication she was dead. The relatives told the committee the patient was bleeding heavily when she was taken out of the theatre but no blood transfusion was given. Several complaint committee members said it was considered 'taboo' among surgeons to have a patient die on the operating table. But a private neurologist disagreed with the committee. He said merely judging a patient's pupil activity would not be enough to confirm death. 'Even if the doctors staged a show, they did it out of goodwill,' he said.
