Feeding for Comfort
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this talk you will be able to answer the following question:
- Can we really do that?!
- Review of the legal and ethical positions on forgoing ANH in children
- Ok…but why would we want to?!
- Explore the risks and benefits of providing and forgoing ANH

Dr. Adam Rapoport, MD, FRCPC, MHSc
Medical Director, Paediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT)
Resources and References Mentioned in Session
- Guidelines on Forgoing Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment
- Treatment decisions regarding infants, children and adolescents
- Making decisions to limit treatment in life-limiting and life-threatening conditions in children: a framework for practice
- Artificial feeding for a child with a degenerative disorder: a family’s view
- Accepting death without artificial nutrition or hydration
- Comfort care for terminally ill patients. The appropriate use of nutrition and hydration
- Terminal nutrition: framing the debate for the withdrawal of nutritional support in terminally ill patients
- The ethics of withholding/withdrawing nutrition in the newborn
- Fasting: the history, pathophysiology and complications
Session Materials
Next Session
May 21, 2025
11:15 am – 12:45 pm
"The Good Parent"
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