Ethical and legal aspects of the emergency management of brain death and organ retrieval.
Patients brought to an emergency room with profound brain damage can be determined to be unsalvageable but usually cannot be declared brain dead. Most such patients should be admitted to the hospital for physiologic support and formal brain death determination. There are ethical and legal justifications, discussed in this article, for physicians to encourage the families of such patients to consent for them to be organ and tissue donors.
D001049:Apnea / Q000175:diagnosis; D026686:Beneficence; D001767:Blinking; D001926:Brain Death; D001927:Brain Diseases; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D035082:Federal Government; D005102:Health Expenditures; D018594:Human Body; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D038622:Internationality; D007603:Jurisprudence; D008297:Male; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D010819:Physician's Role; D012025:Reflex, Pupillary; D012027:Reflex, Vestibulo-Ocular; D014019:Tissue Donors; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*