Abstract
In recent decades, the ethical issues that arise in the care of surgical patients have received increasing attention. Although these issues in surgical ethics are not completely different from the ethical issues that arise in the care of nonsurgical patients, there are significant considerations that warrant specific attention in surgical patients. Central to the ethical issues in surgery are challenges to informed consent for surgery that requires surgeons to transmit information and engender their patients’ trust prior to engaging in potentially dangerous acts. The necessity of weighing risks and benefits in surgery is clear since every surgical intervention carries the potential for significant harm to the patient. Innovations in surgery require specific attention since novel techniques designed to benefit specific patients do not require prior approval or review before a surgeon can undertake them. Surgical research, on the other hand, does require prior approval and specific research informed consent and also raises additional ethical considerations when compared to research in other areas of medicine. Although ethical issues in the care of surgical patients are not different in kind from the ethical issues in other areas of medical care, they are different enough in degree that they warrant specific attention.
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Further Readings
Grant, S. B., Modi, P. K., & Singer, E. A. (2014). Futility and the care of surgical patients: Ethical dilemmas. World Journal of Surgery, 38(7), 1631–1637.
Namm, J. P., Siegler, M., Brander, C., Kim, T. Y., Lowe, C., & Angelos, P. (2014). History and evolution of surgical ethics: John Gregory to the twenty-first century. World Journal of Surgery, 38(7), 1568–1573.
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Angelos, P. (2015). Surgery: General. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_411-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_411-1
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