Word: electroencephalograms
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French surgeons had to wait for months-not only for a suitable donor and recipient but also for their government to decide when a dead man is dead. At last the Cabinet ruled that a donor is dead when his electroencephalogram (brainwave recording) has shown no activity and he has had no reflexes for several hours. Scarcely was this decision taken when Donor Michel Gyppaz, 23, died of head injuries at Paris' ancient, crumbling Hopital de la Pitie...
When did Denise Darvall die? Explains Dr. Marius Barnard, 40, younger brother of Christiaan and his right-hand assistant during surgery: "I know in some places they consider the patient dead when the electroencephalogram shows no more brain function. We are on the conservative side, and consider a patient dead when the heart is no longer working, the lungs are no longer working, and there are no longer any complexes...
...associate sounds with their sources and respond directly to external stimuli. He will also not learn to talk on schedule. But simple tests by doctors can usually discover whether the cause of such symptoms is deafness, and there is now a new tool for more difficult diagnoses, a computerized electroencephalogram. Electrodes are taped to the infant's head to measure brainwave responses to sounds. The responses are averaged by the computer, and the results are compared with those of a normal child...
...drastic as it is technically delicate. First a bunch of holes are drilled into the patient's skull; metal guides are screwed into place and steel electrodes are jabbed through the guides, as far as two inches into the brain, to make a special kind of electroencephalogram (EEC). The electrodes are left in place for three weeks or so, and repeated EEGs are taken-when the patient is asleep, during a spontaneous seizure, or when the doctors induce a seizure with a drug or electricity. The position of the implanted electrodes is changed if necessary. Then, after the offending...
Many physicians now believe that the question "Is this patient dead?" should be answered largely on the basis of his electroencephalogram (EEC or "brain wave") tracings. "Although the heart has been enthroned through the ages as the sacred chalice of life's blood," says Boston's Neurosurgeon Dr. Hannibal Hamlin, "the human spirit is the product of man's brain, not his heart." Yet generally, in legal practice, a pronouncement of death is based only upon the heart's having stopped beating and takes no account of the brain...