[Confidentiality in medical practice: tell no one].

Medical confidentiality is sometimes difficult to impose on patient's families, especially in the field of oncology. Here, we describe the case of a 54-years-old woman with a T1N0M0 lung adenocarcinoma. After the diagnosis was made, she advised the medical team not to inform her family about her disease.

[A difficult end of life].

The law specifies how a doctor may write a medical certifcate and how a patient or his beneficiaries can obtain his medical records. It's important for a doctor to know this rules. A 56 years old patient was referred to our hospital for pulmonary adenocarcinoma cT2N2M1, the clinical stage was IV.

[A difficult diagnosis].

The patient information and obtaining their consent before any therapeutic constitute a basis for medicine exercise. However, there are situations where the physician may be in default. In that case, concepts of benefit/risk balance, of clear and appropriate information, and of legal liability for medico-surgical staff takes all their magnitude.

[Withholding and withdrawal decisions in oncology: legal frame and practice].

Whereas medicine is progressing in illness treatment that used to be incurable, physicians are still faced with treatment failure. Hippocrates used to say: "primum non nocere" [1]. When the patient cannot expect benefit from potentially aggressive care, current or possible treatments have to be challenged to leave just the ones giving immediate benefice.