Sandwell And West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust v TW & Anor [2021] EWCOP 13

​​Application by NHS Trust asking the court to declare whether it would be in the P's best interests to continue to receive life sustaining treatment, ventilation and blood pressure medication or alternatively, whether it would be lawful to withdraw it.

The P suffered a catastrophic stroke in December 2020 and was in a coma. Over the following weeks, the medical staff said in their evidence that the intensive care interventions for the P were not merely futile but had become burdensome and invasive and that to require them to provide treatment in these circumstances, which they assessed as contrary to the P's interests, came perilously close to, if not crossing, an ethical boundary. The other issue to decide was whether to allow the P's family, who lived in Canada, to visit him before he died.

The court concluded that it was in the best interests of the P to allow him to die. However, the court could not yield to the request of the family to visit him - the medical evidence indicated that he would not know of their presence beside him.

Read the full text of the judgment on Bailii.