life-support

Noun

life support (uncountable)

1. An artificial system designed to provide oxygen and other conditions necessary for human life in an inhospitable environment.
   • The more immediate concern is the life support systems. Those units are fifty years old—a conservative estimate. If the air scrubbers stop working, we die. If the pressure regulators stop working, we die. Artificial gravity fails? We die. You get the picture.2017, BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Engineer's Report
2. The maintenance of vital functions of a critically ill or comatose person or a person undergoing surgery.
3. The equipment and special procedures used for life support.
4. (figuratively) A means of sustaining existence or continuation of something, usually in an artificial manner when it should have changed or terminated in its natural environment.
   • As we've seen, Belarus is a Soviet time capsule that continues only because Russia is keeping it on life support.2011, Francis Tapon, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us, page 135