Can a person receive compensation for pain because a doctor unnecessarily prolonged his or her suffering? No, now ruled the Federal Court in Karlsruhe.
The case involved a man who died at the age of 82. According to his son Heinz Sening, he could not speak in the last two years of his life and was immobilized in bed. A feeding tube kept him alive artificially. The treatment was a senseless torture, says Sening. The attending physician should have had his father die. What the patient himself would have wanted is unclear. A living will was not available.
Sening therefore sued for compensation and damages. Overall, he demanded 152,000 euros for "continued assault" and the resulting care costs. With the death of his father Sening had also inherited his claims to compensation for pain.
According to the medical standards on terminal care: "For patients who are not yet dying, but are likely to die in the foreseeable future, it is necessary to change the treatment goal if life-support measures would only prolong suffering or the change of the treatment goal corresponds to the will of the patient. "
In the lower court, the Higher Regional Court of Munich Sening had therefore given right and awarded him 40,000 euros pain and suffering. The tube feeding served at least in the last two years of the pure life support, the judges decided at that time.
Although the family doctor was not obliged to stop treatment himself, the verdicts state. However, he should have approached the supervisor and had to discuss with him very thoroughly whether the gastric tube placed in 2006 should remain or not. Because his son lives in the US, a lawyer looked after the dementia patient at that time.
Both Sening and the family doctor went into revision, so now the Federal Court of Justice was the highest civil court.
The German Foundation for Patient Protection advises to provide on time and to write down precise treatment instructions for situations such as wake coma, organ failure or just dementia. "This way, self-determination is guaranteed until death," says CEO Eugen Brysch. "If there had been a living will, the process would be superfluous." According to his experience, the doctors have rethought that over-therapy is becoming increasingly rare.