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Any living organism requires conditions that enable the continued functioning of essential facets of their being. Factors that limit this function must be corrected in an appropriate time and manner or life will cease. The broad term life support covers all of these factors. The special case below is but an example of the depth of intervention that may be needed to keep a single individual human alive. We as global citizens are approaching a time when extreme measures similar to those described may be needed to maintain the function of beings that can not survive if current conditions are significantly modified. Our choices to ignore the maintenance of the climate control system that we all inherited are already beginning this process of systemic change. The Earth will be fine but life as we know it will not be possible if this situation is allowed to continue for much longer. If the change occurs as fast as it now appears to be happening the kinds of life support described below will also be impossible to render because there will be no care givers. Life support in medicine is a broad term that applies to any therapy used to sustain a patient's life while they are critically ill or injured, as part of intensive-care medicine. There are many therapies and techniques that may be used by clinicians to achieve the goal of sustaining life. Some examples include:

• Feeding tube
• Total parenteral nutrition
• Mechanical ventilation
• Heart/Lung bypass
• Urinary catheterization
• Dialysis
• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation
• Defibrillation
• Artificial pacemaker
• Life extension

These techniques are applied most commonly in the Emergency Department, Intensive Care Unit and, Operating Rooms. As various life support technologies have improved and evolved they are used increasingly outside of the hospital environment. For example a patient who requires a ventilator for survival are commonly discharged home with these devices. Another example includes the now ubiquitous presence of Automated external defibrillator in public venues which allow lay people to deliver life support in a prehospital environment.

The ultimate goals of life support depend on the specific patient situation. Typically life support is used to sustain life while the underlying injury or illness is being treated or evaluated for prognosis. Life support techniques may also be used indefinitely if the underlying medical condition cannot be corrected but a reasonable quality of life can still be expected.

1. Cite error: The named reference James Hansen, NASA;~~Alan Page~~ was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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