Zgoda na leczenie pacjenta w podeszłym wieku
Consent for the treatment of an elderly patient

Summary/Abstract: The paper emphasizes that both medical and legal practice indicate that the procedure of obtaining consent from elderly patients can generate numerous doubts and problems. Binding normative acts do not apply to the category of an elderly person. Such patients, however, canexperience various cognitive disorders due to their health condition. It is therefore not surprisingt hat in such cases certain doubts may arise as to whether a patient expressed a fully conscious consent for treatment or not. By principle, such issues are regulated by current legal regulations, but they apply defined categories (a person unable to understand the sense of information,an unconscious person, and a legally incapacitated person). When a given case is classified as a certain category, the relevant procedure to obtain the consent for treatment applies. The classification into one of the above categories is conclusive, whereas medicine abounds in extremely‘fluid’and vague situations that can produce different assessments as to whether the consentobtained was actually relevant. Nevertheless, the author of the paper emphasizes that evenunder these circumstances the principle of salus aegroti suprema lex esto, as stipulated in the preamble to the Code of Medical Ethics, applies. He also indicates that, paradoxically, the welfareof the patient will not always mean his/her improved health condition. Sometimes, whenthere is no consent for treatment, the abandonment of treatment will have to be treated as behaviorin the interest of the patient. In this context, there can emerge doubts whether in the case of elderly patients with cognitive dysfunction (which is a comprehensive category, after all) theconsent for treatment or its lack has been duly obtained. It also needs to be borne in mind thata doctor’s activity without a patient’s consent may result in the legal liability of the former.

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