Organ Donation after Cardiac Death
Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Since 1968, when an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School proposed a brain-based definition of death that became widely accepted, organs for transplantation have been removed primarily from hospitalized patients who have been pronounced dead on the basis of neurologic criteria, when they are on ventilators and their hearts continue to function. The continued circulation of blood helps to prevent the organs from deteriorating.

Obtaining organs from donors after cardiac death — when the heart is no longer beating — is the approach that was generally followed in the 1960s and earlier. Today, such donations typically involve patients who are on a ventilator as the result of devastating and irreversible brain injuries, such as those caused by trauma or intracranial bleeding. Potential donors might also have high spinal cord injuries or end-stage musculoskeletal disease. Although such patients may be so near death that further treatment is futile, they are not dead.
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If the number of organ donations after cardiac death continues to increase, more patients will be able to receive transplants. At present, however, these donations remain troubling to some and are not as widely accepted as donations after brain death. Broader experience with the recommended practices should help, but concerns are likely to persist.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 10:17 am and is filed under Ethics, Health and healthcare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.