Word: electroencephalograms
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...artificial respirator, surgically connected to her windpipe, forces her lungs to work, enabling her to continue in what her doctors describe as a "chronic vegetative state." Her heart is beating, and her permanently damaged brain continues to function, sending off slight but steady signals visible on an electroencephalogram...
...with a still undiagnosed malady (perhaps the result of mistakenly mixing a tranquilizer and drinks), she has remained in a coma ever since. One side of her permanently damaged brain shows almost no sign of functioning while the other gives off only slight but steady signals visible on an electroencephalogram. Last week, unwittingly, Karen Ann became the focus of the continuing legal-medical-ethical controversy over how to define death...
...most cases the damage is confined to one side of the brain. This is fortunate, because surgery is impossible if both sides are damaged. In operable cases, the damaged side of the brain produces abnormal electrical activity, making the electroencephalogram (brainwave tracing) look like one of the Alps' more jagged ranges. Worse, the damaged side interferes electrically with the undamaged side and sets off abnormal activity there. It does not matter which side of the brain is dominant*: damage on either side will involve both hemispheres and eventually produce crippling disabilities...
...their own minds. But there remained some sticking points in medical ethics. How to determine the death of the donor? On three criteria there was general agreement: The patient must no longer have any natural heartbeat, or respiration, or reflexes. Beyond that, he must have a "flat" electroencephalogram-no "brain wave" activity-but for how long? After the closed sessions in Cape Town, all that Spokesman Cooley could say was: "We have reached some agreement as to the nature of brain death...
Father Damien had no problems regarding the donor. "The donor," he wrote, "is in no way 'sacrificed' by the doctors. He has already been in a closed circuit [heart-lung machine] for days, and is therefore already dead (flat electroencephalogram, etc.). His survival is artificial. So, no problem...