Brain death is often a complex subject because of the various terms that are associated with it. When trying to determine if a patient is brain dead, ethics come into the picture on whether or not to take the patient off of life support. Brain death, as stated by Joe Vukov, is when a person is in an “irreversible coma, there are absences of brainstem functions, there are absences of spontaneous respiration, and the person has to be on a ventilator. Legally, there is no difference between death and brain death”. Over many decades, various cases of brain death has been controversial. In most instances, once a doctor explains to parents or a loved one that the patient is brain dead, the family of the patient reacts in a way that is denying the fact that that patient is dead. Brain death and being dead are almost one in the same and most of the time family members cannot accept that their loved one is dead. There is nothing that doctors can do about it. They see the person they love lying in a bed. They feel the warmth of the person’s skin. They believe that the person is still alive and will wake up someday; however, it is more complicated than that. Yes, the person’s body is still alive but that person’s consciousness is gone. There is no brain activity at all. It is like a chocolate shell. Yes, we can see the chocolate but there is nothing on the inside of it, it is empty. Just as the person’s consciousness and brain activity is completely gone and what is left is just a body that is hooked up to a ventilator allowing the body to remain alive.
In an article, The Challenges of Defining and Diagnosing Brain Death, Karen Nitkin discusses these same problems that are happening in hospitals with patients that are on ventilators. It is the same scenario more or less. The patient’s family does not want to take their loved one off of life support because they are in denial that the patient is still alive. The hard truth is that hospitals cannot keep wasting space for people that are already dead, when patients that can breathe on their own need the space more. Also, other patients have a greater chance of recovering. Usually when someone is brought in from an accident, many procedures are done to help the patient and when all else fails, a special consultant is brought in to inspect the patient to see if they are brain dead. These are the worst times for family members because when nothing else can be done for the patient, doctors bring up the subject of organ donation which can be very hard for family members. In hospitals, the demand for organ donations continue to grow. There are so many people that need new organs and are put on a wait list for years. Because of a high demand, doctors want to make sure that if a patient is brain dead, they are able to use those organs to save the lives of others. This can be very controversial since brain death is a hard subject to explain.
Currently the diagnosis for brain death takes up less time than it did in the past because the circumstances have been well refined. Neurologists and consultants perform various neurological tests and are able to concur a diagnosis of brain death which is more reliable. Most hospitals go with the advice of the consultant. Although, in Maryland, hospitals are able to accommodate the viewpoints of families because of religious reasons. The majority of other states still continue to expand the regulations of brain death patients in hospitals. In addition to being more descriptive as to defining what brain death is and the precautions that go with that to determine if organs of that patient are viable. Also incorporating the ethics standard with families so that they can use the patients’ organs.
Nitkin, K. (2017, November 7). The Challenges of Defining and Diagnosing Brain Death. Retrieved from https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/the-challenges-of-defining-and-diagnosing-brain-death
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