Non-Heart-Beating Organ Donation: A Defense of the Required Determination of Death |
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| Authors: | James M DuBois |
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| Institution: | James M. DuBois, PhD, DSc, is an Assistant Professor of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University, in St. Louis, Missouri. He serves on the United Net-work for Organ Sharings Region 8 Liver Review Board and the Mid-America Transplant Services Non-Heart-Beating Organ Donation Committee. |
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| Abstract: | The family of a patient who is unconscious and respirator-dependent has made a decision to discontinue medical treatment. The patient had signed a donor card. The family wants to respect this decision, and agrees to non-heart-beating organ donation. Consequently, as the patient is weaned from the ventilator, he is prepped for organ explantation. Two minutes after the patient goes into cardiac arrest, he is declared dead and the transplant team arrives to begin organ procurement. At the time retrieval begins, it is not certain that the patient's brain is dead or that cardiac function cannot be restored. Procurement follows uneventfully, and two transplantable kidneys are retrieved . |
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