India, March 12 -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday came down heavily on the common hospital practice of discharging patients "against medical advice" when treatment is discontinued, warning that such a course risks undermining patient care and may amount to an abdication of medical responsibility.

Such "discharge against medical advice" (DAMA) forms are frequently issued in situations where patients are on life support, such as ventilators, and their families seek to take them home after doctors indicate that further curative treatment is uncertain. The observations came in a landmark judgment allowing passive euthanasia for a 32-year-old man who has remained in a permanent vegetative state for more than a decade.

While elaborating the l...