FAQ – Medical
FAQ – Medical
This page was compiled by:
Dr. Noam Stadlan, Assistant Professor
Department of Neurosurgery at Rush University,
Chicago
Board member, Halachic Organ Donor Society
- What is the timeframe for organ donation after cardiac death?
- What are the 8 organs that a person can halachically donate?
- What organs can you donate if you wait for the cessation of heart beat?
- How do I get a kidney?
1. What is the definition of death?
Answer: Historically, death was defined as unconsciousness coupled with irreversible cessation of breathing (respiration) and heartbeat (circulation). This definition is still very much in use today.
However, with the invention in the late 1950’s of ventilators, artificial breathing can support the heartbeat and the brain (Christopher Reeve was supported by a ventilator from the time of his accident until his death). In addition to ventilators which mimic breathing, artificial hearts and heart transplants can continue to supply oxygenated blood to the brain. The medical community has come to understand that death is not defined as those functions which can be re-instituted artificially (breathing and heartbeat), but by the irreversible cessation of the most function and the beneficiary of both breathing and blood circulation, the brain. Therefore, a more advanced understanding of death was accepted by the medical community: when the brain dies before the heart and respiration ceases, this is known as neurological death or brain-death.
Accordingly, it is misleading to call a patient “brain-dead”, since that sounds as if the patient is alive and merely suffering from a condition. The brain dead patient is dead and the medical community knows this by the fact that the brain is dead.
Click here for a Powerpoint presentation on the definition of death, in Hebrew: אתיקה רפואית ביהדות 
Answer: Brain death is the cessation of life due to the irreversible loss of critical brain function. In other words, the brain has stopped working and will never start again. Brain death can happen in two different ways: by whole brain death, and by brain-stem death.
Brain death is a clinical diagnosis. Meaning bedside exams can reveal brain-stem death. Blood flow studies are only confirmatory, not diagnostic. If a proper exam, including apnea tests weren’t done, it doesn’t matter what the blood flow study shows. Also, one blood flow study is only one snapshot, not an absence of flow over a long period. If there were two studies over a period of time, both showing no blood flow, it would be confirmatory of brain-stem death.
Answer: The brain mainly consists of the larger part of the brain (the cortex) and the smaller part of the brain (the brain-stem). Whole brain death is when the entire brain (both cortex and brain-stem) is not functioning, and medical tests show this to be irreversible.
Answer: This is where the lower part of the brain, called the brain-stem, is not functioning and has no chance of ever functioning again. The brain-stem has many crucial functions, including the reticular activating system, an area responsible for activating and deactivating the rest of the brain. As a result of brain-stem death, none of the brain (including the cortex) will show any external evidence of working. The brain-stem also controls breathing, so that a person whose brain-stem isn’t working cannot breathe at all on their own. He or she is unconscious and the beating heart is totally dependent on getting oxygen from a ventilator.
5. What is the difference between whole brain death and brain-stem death (BSD)?
Answer: In both cases, there is a total absence of any response whatsoever to stimulation, and a total lack of breathing and total unconsciousness and no chance of recovery. The difference lies in the results of testing. In BSD there are instances where blood succeeds in reaching other areas of the cortex and there can be measurable electrical tracings as indicated by an EEG. This is not necessarily indicative of brain function but rather that some cells have electrical activity. Very much like a heart that stops beating has cells that that have electrical activity. Even with this activity, if the patient is brain-stem dead, there is no chance of recovering consciousness or breathing.
6. Can a person wake up from brain-stem death?
Answer: No. No patient that was ever diagnosed brain-stem dead by adequate criteria (Clinical bedside testing, Apnea, and Brain Blood Flow Studies) has ever woken up from brain-stem death. Brain-stem death, according to the medical community, is death. And even though the heart now continues to beat because it is artificially being supplied with oxygen (by means of ventilator), ultimately there will be complete systemic failure and the heart will stop beating, usually within a few days.
7. Has anyone who is brain-stem dead ever started to breathe on their own or regain any mental or voluntary bodily life function?
Answer: No.
8. How is brain-stem death determined?
Answer:
STEP 1
The first step is to establish that a competent cause of brain-stem death exists. In other words, just because someone is unconscious, we don’t suspect that they are whole-brain or brain-stem dead. There has to be significant injury (trauma, stroke, swelling, etc.) to the brain that makes one suspect death by neurologic criteria. Sometimes, when the medical history is unclear, imaging studies, such as CT or MRI, are able to supply evidence that a trauma has occurred to the brain. In addition, reversible causes of deep coma, such as hypothermia (low body temperature), hypotension (low blood pressure), overdose of certain drugs (such as barbiturates, paralytics, etc.), and a small group of neurological conditions, must be ruled out.
STEP 2
Next is the physical examination of the patient. First and foremost, the patient must be unconscious in a very deep coma state, unresponsive to any stimulation, and not breathing on his or her own. In other words, there can be no response of any kind to voice, pain, or any stimulation. If there is any response, the patient by definition is not brain-stem dead.
STEP 3
The specific functions of the brain-stem are tested for even the slightest function. This means looking for reflexes whose pathways run through the brain-stem. If any of the reflexes are present, it means that those pathways still work, and at least part of the brain-stem is alive. Of the many neurological reflexes of the brain-stem, the 6 main reflexes are:
- Eye Reaction (Pupillary Reflex): Ordinarily pupils react to light (pupillary reflex). When a bright light is directed into the eyes, in a normal patient the pupils (the dark center of the eye) react and contract, becoming smaller. If pupils are fixed (no response) and dilated (large) there is no neurological response.
- Eye Movement (“Doll’s Eyes”): In a patient with a working brain-stem (even if asleep or unconscious) if the head is turned rapidly from side to side, the eyes will move in their sockets and remain fixed, “staring” straight ahead as if they are focusing on one spot. This is the result of a neurological reflex. If the eyes stay fixed in their sockets and the movement of the head from side to side bring the eyes along with it (called ‘doll’s eyes’), this demonstrates that the brainstem is not working.
- Eye Movement (“Cold Caloric”): When ice-cold water is injected into the ear of a normal person, it cools down the balancing mechanisms in the inner ear and triggers eye movement (called nystagmus.) When the brain-stem isn’t working, there is no eye movement in response to injection of cold water into the ear canal.
- Eye Reflex (The Blink, or Corneal, Reflex): When the brain-stem is working, the eyes blink when the cornea (the transparent part of the eye) is touched. When the brain-stem is not working, no blinking occurs, no matter what the stimulation to the cornea.
- Gag reflex: If you touch the back of the throat of a healthy person with a working brain-stem, it elicits a gagging reflex. When the brain-stem is not working, there is no gagging, no matter how great the stimulation.
- Apnea Test (absence of autonomous breathing): This is the most important test used to confirm brain-stem death. The short description is that the ventilator is shut off and if the patient is not breathing then this shows that the brain stem has no function.The long description involves understanding breathing. When breathing occurs, oxygen is brought into the body, and carbon dioxide is expelled. Therefore, breathing serves to increase the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream, and decrease the amount of carbon dioxide.The impulse to breathe occurs when the level of carbon dioxide rises to a significant degree. The best test of the impulse to breathe is under conditions where the oxygen level is normal, but the carbon dioxide level is too high. This test can easily be done with appropriate attention to detail.The respirator artificial ventilation tubing attached to the ventilator is removed from the patient (the tube going into the patient’s trachea is left in place), and oxygen is blown into the lungs. The patient is monitored either for a specific period of time (8-10 minutes), or until the carbon dioxide reaches a specific level. Any movement of the chest during the test is considered a sign of breathing and there are also monitors that can measure even the most minute movements of respiratory muscles. If the brain-stem is totally destroyed, no sign of breathing or attempted breathing will be seen.Most hospital protocols require testing for brain-stem activity (some specifically require a repeat apnea test and not a reflex test) to be repeated anywhere from 6-24 hours later, in order to confirm absence of brain-stem activity.
9. What is Confirmatory testing?
Answer: In addition to observing lack of neurological reflexes controlled by the brain-stem, (e.g. lack of breathing), there are a number of tests available to help assess brain function.
Imaging – CT and MRI scans are able to show the brain and see if any damage (e.g. trauma, bleeding, and swelling) is evident. If it is not, the diagnosis of brain death is doubtful.
EEG (Electroencephalogram) – The EEG measures the activity of brain cells. In some cases of brain-stem death, some electrical activity is sometimes seen in areas of the brain outside the brain-stem. In whole brain death, the EEG is totally silent. Other tests, such as brain-stem audio-evoked responses (BAER) measure the electrical activity of a specific pathway. The BAER measures how the brain responds to sound. In both brain-stem death and whole brain death, the BAER should show the absence of any response from the brain and the brain-stem.
Brain Blood Flow Studies – Brain Blood Flow studies document the presence or absence of blood flow to the brain:
- Angiogram – The standard (but most invasive) test is an angiogram. In this test, a dye that shows up on x-ray is injected into the arteries, and motion-picture x-rays (fluoroscopy) are taken to observe whether the dye enters the brain or not. The absence of blood flow to the brain confirms whole-brain death. In brain-stem death, there can be blood flow to parts of the brain, but not to the brain-stem.
- Nuclear Blood Flow – The most common blood flow test used today is a nuclear blood flow test. In this test, a mildly radioactive tracer is injected into the bloodstream (usually a vein). Measurements of radioactivity are taken, again to see if any tracer enters the brain. This test may be less accurate than the angiogram because very slow blood flow to the brain might be missed. However, brain cells, highly sensitive to oxygen deprivation, would have trouble staying alive if supplied with only that very small blood flow, so the significance of that small blood flow is probably negligible as far as brain function is concerned.
- Transcranial Doppler (TCD)– In this test, an ultrasound wave is sent-through the skull to measure the amount and direction of blood-flow in the arteries inside the skull. Sometimes it is difficult to find the exact area on the skull to place the sensors and in some patients the TCD sensors won’t be effective. However, when done properly, the TCD can show an absence of blood flow in the arteries supplying blood to the brain.
10. How is whole brain death determined?
Answer: The findings on examination in whole brain death are the same as in brain-stem death (no breathing, no reflexes, deep coma, etc.). The only difference is that the confirmatory studies (EEG, blood flow, etc.) show that there is no function or blood flow to any part of the brain.
11. What does an autopsy of a dead patient by neurological criteria show?
Answer: Examinations (at autopsy) of the brains of patients who have been declared brain-dead, even whole-brain-dead, do not always show that every single brain cell was dead. This does not mean that the brain was capable of functioning or that those cells were capable of function. Even people declared dead based on cardiac criteria, show evidence of cellular life in the cells of the heart for a short time even after the beating of the heart has stopped. This does not mean the heart or the person was “alive.”
12. Can any doctor declare a patient to be brain dead?
Answer: Criteria differ from state to state, and hospital to hospital. Although any physician can legally make this declaration, it is best done by a Neurologist or Neurosurgeon or by a physician who is very familiar with the protocols and proper means of testing, in order ensure that a patient who appears brain dead is actually brain dead.
13. What are the chances of a doctor misdiagnosing brain death?
Answer: People express concern that doctors will make a mistake in their diagnosis of brain death. Yet there are many more mistakes that doctors make diagnosing clinical death (the irreversible cessation of heartbeat) than mistaking brain death. One of the reasons is because any doctor who recently graduated medical school is allowed to declare cardiac death. But only a specialist (a neurologist) – who has many years of experience – is allowed to declare brain death.
14. What is the difference between coma and brain-death? (Are all patients in a coma also brain dead?)
Answer: Brain death is quite rare. Patients can be in a coma or have severe brain damage but still have some brain function and not be brain dead. Most patients in a coma are not brain dead, and they sometimes recover. Patients who are brain dead (whole brain dead and brain-stem dead), on the other hand, have no chance of recovery.
15. What is persistent vegetative state (PVS)?
Answer: PVS is a type of coma. A PVS patient is not dead according to American law or Israeli law. PVS describes severe brain damage where the patient is unconscious and does not respond significantly to most stimulation. The unconscious patient sometimes responds to some pain and has some reflexes, but does not respond to voice and does not communicate. Most often PVS patients are breathing on their own. The diagnosis of PVS is given only after this medical situation has persisted for a period of months.
There have been rare cases where PVS patients have regained consciousness. Persistent vegetative state differs from whole brain-death in that patients who are brain dead have absolutely no observable function or reflexes of the do not breathe autonomously, and have no chance of recovery.
16. Will doctors refrain from administering full medical care if they know a patient has a signed organ donor card?
Answer: Some people believe that if doctors know you have a donor card they will prematurely declare you dead before you really are dead in order to get your organs. First, it is difficult to imagine that a doctor in good conscience would kill one patient in order to save another. Such action is unethical and illegal, exposing the physician and the hospital to criminal and civil liability. Second, most hospitals have established protocol that demands a separate medical team -– a team that was not taking care of the patient and is unaware that the patient is a potential donor -– to determine if the patient is brain-stem dead or not.
17. When a BSD donor donates and all organs are being removed, what organs are removed first?
Answer: First the heart and lungs are removed, second, the liver and pancreas and third, the kidneys.
18. What organs do they line up recipients for before the doctor starts recovering any organs?
Answer: With all organs – except kidneys – the transplant community always knows who will be getting which organs before the removal of the organs from the donor. Sometimes that changes when the surgeon sees the organ or as a result of tests done in the OR, or maybe even the potential recipient’s status changes. If an appropriate recipient is not found, the organ is not removed.
19. What is the life expectancy of a person on dialysis?
Answer: People 60-64 are likely to live 4.8 more years on dialysis vs 13 more years on dialysis (that is 8-9 years longer) for 45-50 year-olds. The benefit is 13-14 more years on transplant than on dialysis — and these increments do not even take into account concurrent illness or how long the person had been on dialysis prior to transplantation.
20. If a brain-stem dead woman can carry a fetus, how can she be considered dead?
Answer: Pregnant women who became brain dead can carry for a fetus a few weeks or more. So while the body of a brain dead woman can continue to be pregnant and successfully gestate a baby, does that mean she is “alive?” The question is what function or tissue is the essence of a human being? Modern science is good enough that we can support these bodily functions without a functioning brain. But does that mean if we build an incubator that can allow a zygote to gestate that we assign it the status of a human being?
21. Do brain-stem dead people react when you cut into them to recover the organs?
Answer: There have not been any documented responses suggesting awareness of pain in people who are brain dead and it makes no physiological sense since the nerves mediating pain pass through the (now destroyed) brain stem to transmit their signals. There have been reports of increases in blood pressure with skin incisions for organ procurement. These increases in blood pressure are eliminated with sympathetic blockers, and are not eliminated with narcotics, proving that it is a spinal sympathetic reflex, not a pain mediated response. The mass flexion response (sitting up) is well documented as a spinal reflex (reflex of Ivan) and has nothing to do with brain function.
22. What is the timeframe for organ donation after cardiac death?
Answer: For donation after cardiac death to proceed, death must occur within a timeframe consistent with successful donation. The timeframes for organs being considered for donation are 30 minutes for liver and pancreas, 60 minutes for kidneys, and 90 minutes for lungs. For the purposes of this protocol, a timeframe of 90 minutes has been specified.
23. What are the 8 organs that a person can halachically donate?
Answer: The general Halachic principle applied is that any organ that can save a life may be donated because saving a life (pikuach nefesh) overrides all prohibitions concerning a cadaver. Skin donation, for example, is allowed if used for severely burned victims who need skin grafts to survive. Heart, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, liver, and intestines clearly saves lives. (Some of these organs can be divided into two saving multiple lives.) And Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, considered blindness a life-threatening illness because the Talmud (Nedarim 64b) compared a blind person to a dead person and ruled that donating corneas to return lost sight is halachicly ‘saving a life.’
24. What organs can you donate if you wait for the cessation of heart beat?
Answer: If you wait for the heart to stop beating naturally you have only 40 minutes to recover liver and kidneys. But since the transplant surgeon most likely will not be in the vicinity at the exact moment the heart stops beating practically speaking only skin and cornea can be recovered.
25. How do I get a Kidney?
Check out this site http://www.lkdn.org/
Check out Renewal in Brooklyn.
How do I get an organ transplant?
- LIVING DONOR: You can get a kidney (or even part of a lung or liver) through a live donor, that can come from a family member, friend or stranger. Kidneys from living donors function better and last longer than from cadavers. And if you find a willing donor you don’t have to go through the transplant waiting list. In addition, even if your willing donor is not a blood type match there are many different cross matching programs where your donor donates to someone else and you end getting a kidney that matches you.1b) HOW DO YOU FIND A LIVING DONOR? You need to be very public about your need for a kidney donor on social media, in your local religious house of worship, through your family and friends and work network.
- CADAVER DONOR: You can get an organ from a cadaver by putting yourself on a waiting list run by the United Network for Organ Sharing. Matching between donor and recipient is based on a variety of factors including: blood and tissue types, medical need, length of time on the waiting list and weight of donor and recipient.
2b) How Do I Get On The Waiting List?
– Receive a referral from your physician.
– Contact a transplant hospital. Learn as much as possible about the 200+ transplant hospitals in the United States and choose one based on your needs, including insurance, location, finances and support group availability.
– Schedule an appointment for evaluation to determine if you are a good candidate for transplant.
– During the evaluation, ask questions to learn as much as possible about that hospital and its transplant team.
– The hospital’s transplant team will decide whether you are a good transplant candidate. Each hospital has their own criteria for accepting candidates for transplant.
If the hospital’s transplant team determines that you are a good transplant candidate, they will add you to the national waiting list.
2c) Can I List In Multiple Places?
Yes. This is called “multiple listing.” UNOS policy permits patients to be considered for organs that become available in other areas by being evaluated and listed at more than one center. This may reduce your waiting time in some cases, but not always. There is no advantage to listing at more than one transplant center in the same Organ Procurement Organization local area. Each center has its own criteria for listing transplant candidates, and each center can refuse to evaluate patients seeking to list at multiple centers. If you wish to list at more than one center, inform your primary center and other centers you contact.
2d) HOW LONG?
What is The Average Wait Time for an Organ? It can take days to years. The average waiting time for a kidney is 3-5 years.
2e) WHO PAYS?
Your insurance will pay. If you have an issue paying transplant programs have a social worker and/or a financial coordinator that can direct you to local, regional, and national organizations that can provide financial assistance.
How Does the Matching Process Work?
- An organ is donated. When the organ becomes available, the OPO managing the donor sends information to UNOS. The OPO procurement team reports medical and genetic information, including organ size, and condition, blood type and tissue type.
- UNOS generates a list of potential recipients. The UNOS computer generates a list of potential transplant candidates who have medical and biologic profiles compatible with the donor. The computer ranks candidates by this biologic information, as well as clinical characteristics and time spent on the waiting list.
- The transplant center is notified of an available organ. Organ placement specialists at the Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) or the UNOS Organ Center contact the medical centers whose patients appear on the local list.
- The transplant team considers the organ for the patient. When the team is offered an organ, it bases its acceptance or refusal of the organ upon established medical criteria, organ condition, candidate condition, staff and patient availability and organ transportation. By policy, the transplant team has only one hour to make its decision.
- The organ is accepted or declined. If the organ is not accepted, the OPO continues to offer it for patients at other centers until it is placed.
To understand how patients are matched on the national waiting list, it’s helpful to think of the list as a “pool” of patients. Each time an organ becomes available, UNetsm searches the entire “pool” for the patients who are a match for the organ. A new list is made from those who match.
The patients on this new list are ranked in order of their level of match to that donor organ. The organ is offered to the transplant hospital where the first patient is listed. Other factors which may be considered are the patient’s current medical status, geographical location, and time on the list. If the organ is refused for any reason, the transplant hospital of the next patient on the list is contacted. This process continues until a match is made.
RESOURCES
https://unos.org/transplantation/faqs/
http://www.cpmc.org/advanced/kidney/LivingDonation/TopQs_Living_Kidney_Donor.html