WTC: Donations After Cardiac Death Could Expand Organ Pool
Loading the player...  Anthony D'Alessandro, M.D. University of
Wisconsin  Action Points    • Explain to interested patients
that donation after cardiac death, which could greatly expand
the pool of available donor organs, is performed only with the
complete and implicit prior consent of patients or their
surrogates, and that removal of life support is performed by the
attending physician, and not the organ procurement or transplant
team. BOSTON, July 25 -- Transplanting organs from those who
suffer cardiac death, rather than the widely accepted standard
of brain death, could sharply increase the supply, said a
surgeon here.  Donors after cardiac death, also called "non-
heart-beating donors," are those considered to be dead according
to circulatory-respiratory criteria specified in the Uniform
Determination of Death Act.  Irreversible circulatory-
respiratory failure differs from breath death in that it implies
but is not definitive of brain death. Br