In 2018, the Supreme Court of India legally recognised the rights of patients with terminal illness through the judgement in Common Cause (A Registered Society) v. Union of India and Another, (2018) 5 SCC 1. The processes prescribed to withhold or withdraw artificial life-support medical treatments became practical after the 2023 amendment. The law aimed to ensure the dignified dying of sick individuals whose condition was deemed terminal and irreversible. Healthcare institutions can comply with the Court’s guidelines in their entirety only after the concerned State Governments activate specific processes. Karnataka state activated the legal mandates by early 2025. Using an implementation case study, we describe the institutional processes to uphold the ethical and legal mandates when withholding/withdrawing life-support treatment (WH/WD-LST) in a mentally incompetent, terminally ill elderly patient, admitted to a tertiary care hospital in Karnataka. It aims to clarify, ( i ) validation of ‘Advance-Medical-Directive’, or the living will; ( ii ) sequential institutional processes for WH/WD-LST as per ethical and legal mandates; ( iii ) constitution of the primary, secondary medical boards (PMB, SMB); ( iv ) reporting formats for PMB, SMB evaluations, and ( v ) the templates relevant to institutional administrators to convey the mandated details of WH/WD-LST to their jurisdictional judiciary magistrate of first class. The impressions and impact of activating the living will and WH/WD-LST on the family, on patient care, for the professionals, and for the institution are described in brief.
Vallath et al. (Sat,) studied this question.