Intensive care medicine

The fifth entry is suspender o tratamento, and English cannot carry it across in one verb without dropping the distinction its own guidance is built on. Two words share the work and they are not interchangeable. « Withholding » is not starting something: the dialysis never begun, the drug not prescribed, the resuscitation that will not be attempted. « Withdrawing » is stopping something already running: the ventilator turned off, the infusion discontinued, the feeding brought to an end. The pair travels together through every British document on the subject, and always in that order, because the first names a decision taken before anything has begun and the second a decision taken after. Suspender leans naturally towards the second, a thing under way that is halted, so a note carried over word for word will show a machine being switched off where the original meant a treatment that was never offered. The verb to leave alone is « to suspend », which in English promises a pause with a resumption to follow, and that is the one thing neither of these decisions promises.