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Kentucky man declared brain dead wakes up during organ harvesting
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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This whole thing is nuts to me. From the way the article reads, the patient was likely still breathing and had a heartbeat. I get wanting to keep organs fresh, but this seems... non ideal
That's a defining feature of brain dead. Otherwise, they're just dead.
True, but for an organ harvest... would you not want the cadaver to be, well, dead dead? Like, would you start taking organs out while the cadaver still has a beating heart?
Once the heart stops beating, the organs fail. Including the heart itself.
That's kind of the point of defining brain death. Normally death is declared after the heart stops beating. In brain death, the heart is beating but the brain is not receiving any blood.
Heartbeat, yes. Breathing, no. Once the brain is completely dead the body can’t breathe on its own, it has to be kept on a ventilator to keep the organs alive.
We are our brain activity and once that's gone for good all that's left is the biological machine that we live within.
A heart will beat as long as it doesn't die or otherwise suffer some other structural failure. They attach brain dead patients to a ventilator to continue respiration to keep the now-vacant body alive. It's a shame someone severely fucked up and compromised the safety and trust of the process in this case but don't let this confuse you into thinking there's no basis for the transplant to occur in the presence of a heartbeat.
Nah that's not unusual. Brain trauma or degradation can and often does leave someone with a beating heart but little to no hope of ever being conscious again - hence the term brain death.