End of life and donation

Advance directives, limiting life-sustaining treatment, palliative sedation, euthanasia in Colombia, brain death and organ donation.

14 pages

Law

• Advance directives (Documento de Voluntad Anticipada)A document in which a capable person writes down which treatments they accept or refuse if they…
• Ley 1733 de 2014: palliative careThe Colombian law giving people with terminal or serious chronic illness the right to palliative…
• Ley 1805 de 2016: presumed consent for organ donationIn Colombia everyone is presumed to be an organ donor after death, unless they recorded their…
• Resolución 813 de 2026: the euthanasia procedure and adjusting therapeutic effortThe Ministry of Health norm that sets how euthanasia is requested, assessed and carried out, and…

Topic

• Artificial nutrition and hydration at the end of lifeTube or intravenous feeding is a medical treatment: it needs an indication, a goal and consent…
• Brain death: the ethical and legal criteria in ColombiaBrain death is the irreversible loss of brainstem function; in Colombia it is the death of the…
• Killing and letting die: euthanasia, assisted suicide and withdrawal comparedCompares euthanasia, medically assisted suicide, withdrawing treatment and palliative sedation…
• Limiting life-sustaining treatment: withholding and withdrawingMatching treatment to what really helps the patient: not starting, or stopping, measures that no…
• Living organ donationA healthy person may donate a kidney or part of the liver if they are adult, capable, informed…
• Medical futility and do-not-resuscitate ordersA futile treatment cannot reach its goal; a do-not-resuscitate order says only that CPR will not…
• Obligatory and optional treatments: proportionalityA treatment is obligatory if its benefits outweigh its burdens for that patient; if not, it is…
• Quality-of-life judgements and QALYsDeciding by quality of life is legitimate when the patient judges it; using it to value other…

Court ruling

• Euthanasia in Colombia: the Constitutional Court's rulingsIn Colombia, euthanasia and medically assisted suicide are not crimes if a doctor performs them…

Procedure

• Palliative sedationLowering a patient's consciousness with drugs to relieve an unbearable symptom that nothing else…

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← Medical ethics and health law

Educational content on ethics and health law; not legal advice. Laws and case law change: each page links the official text and says when it was last checked. For a real case, read the text in force and ask a lawyer or the medical ethics tribunal.

Representative model, for educational purposes only.