Could you induce a coma for patients with severe pain, terminal diseases or other conditions? Is this possible? Would it be a suitable solution medically and ethically for those who oppose euthanasia?
Yes you could and no it wouldn’t.
Why wouldn’t they consider it acceptable??? (thanks for replying)
It’s done today. It’s not very common but it is done. It actually appears to be just about the only known ways to survive rabies infection.
I think the OP means putting terminal patients in a coma until they die rather than a deliberate OD.
Actually I was 25% wondering if it was possible and 75% curious as to seeing discussions about the “moral” aspects
Because permanently immobilized and intubated patients have a plethora of other complications we try to avoid.
OK, but is it problematic for hospital staff and family/loved ones of the patient or is it actually problematic for the patient? How can you have a problem if you are in a coma? Don’t you need to be awake/aware to have a problem?
Induced coma is used to relieve pain, in serious cases where nothing less will work. It can also be used, as OP seems to be asking, to put a patient to sleep and maintain him that way until he dies. That is called “terminal palliation” I believe. Apparently, it’s ethically controversial.
But also: ISTM I’ve seen discussion of palliative induced coma, from people who were there and eventually woken up. A coma is not like being in a temporary vegetative state. The brain is still active, and goes through usual diurnal waking-and-sleeping cycles (except that during the waking phase, the patient still isn’t awake). Brain wave activity shows the brain going through the usual sleep stages, IIRC.
Wait, it gets worse: Some people who have been in this state for a while (like, weeks or months) claim, upon waking up, that they had non-stop (?) dreams the whole time – hideous, horrendous, nightmarish dreams, and they couldn’t stop them or wake up for the whole time. One person claims to have suffered PTSD from it ever since. I vaguely think this came from a thread here on SDMB. Hang tight, I’ll see if I can dig up some cites . . .
ETA: Okay, here’s a post I myself made on this topic in an earlier thread, including two links, one of which still seems to be alive.
wow…
I went through this (2 1/2 weeks induced) except most of the dreams weren’t quite nightmarish (a couple were) but very much more intense and weirder by far that my usual.
I have no idea how long I was “awake” before I was awake but it was certainly non-stop dreams/hallucinations. Even after I was fully awake, the weirdness continued though it was partly the very high doses of narcotics I was on.
I’m reading about coma’s and nightmares on Reddit right now. Some people report no activity but lots of people describe all kind of dreams and mental activity. Unfortunately, much of their reports are negative.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1s0kww/people_who_have_been_in_a_coma_do_you_remember/
Another earlier thread on the subject with some anecdata.
indigoblue (Post #10) described some uncomfortable-sounding dreams, but no major lingering aftereffects.
flatlined (Post #12) wrote:
And finally, guess who (Post #14) cited an article in Scientific American (link is still alive!), with a quote from a commenter who described the experience as a horrific non-stop nightmare. This seems to be the anecdatum I was thinking up in my earlier post in this thread.
It’s done. It’s not officially done, but it’s done. My late husband had undergone a bone marrow,transplant, and was grafting and due for release, when suddenly he was unable to breathe. An emergency bronchoscopy revealed that the chemo therapeutic agents had caused intractable pulmonary necrosis. There was no hope…so rather than wake him up and have him choke to death slowly, I elected to keep him anesthetized with morphine after the procedure. The nurse took me to the side and said to me, in a very odd way, “if you allow us to increase the morphine, past sedation limits, to ‘keep him comfortable’, he will cease breathing in about an hour rather than languishing and dying from necrosis.” She said high dosage morphine has been known to cause death in these cases…but it’s quick. Then she left the room.
I went out of the room, prayed, talked to my mom. And had his dosage increased. My poor man died, with a smile on his face twenty minutes later. I knew it was the right thing because there was absolutely no way to regain lung function and a lung transplant was impossible.
Wow, I’m not sure what to say, I’m glad he didn’t suffer. I wish I had a better response.
Many hugs to you. 
This kind of thing is actually done all the time. It’s not considered euthanasia because it doesn’t cause immediate death, and most ethicists have no issue with it if the prognosis is hopeless.
Medically induced comas are very commonly used in burn units, because the pain is too intense to be reasonably controlled by any other meals, and keeping the patient immobile speeds up the healing process.
I wish I had someone in my life to make that kind of decision for me if the situation arises.
Not even a steady diet of hash brownies could do it!
Hm, makes me wonder what would happen if instead of leaving them ‘as is’ if you gave them an ‘environment’ of a pleasing smell, their favorite music, positive audiobooks instead of hospital stench, beepy noises, random announcements and everything I can remember offhand from various times stuck in ICU or even regular rooms.
<I know that I can influence my dream experience by my choice of smells and sounds - I have uncomfortable dreams when I am in hospital, or there is something in the house like the smell after the roomie burnt her popcorn, and was watching some damned horror movie.>