Word: patients
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...long the EEG must remain flat depends on circumstances. After barbiturate poisoning or long exposure to extreme cold, a patient might have a flat EEG for several hours and still be capable of full recovery. Dr. Schwab would leave the precise timing to the physician's judgment in each case...
...question of when to "pull the plug" and let death occur has acquired new urgency with the practice of transplanting kidneys and other vital organs. Transplant surgeons want organs as fresh as possible; the chance that a cadaver kidney will work well in the recipient patient is vastly increased if it can be removed immediately after circulation has stopped. But in the U.S., as in most countries, it would be illegal to remove a kidney from a patient who has not yet been pronounced dead...
This led to worried talk about "cannibalizing" human beings, like airplanes or autos, to get usable spare parts for others. France's National Academy of Medicine added to the furor by proposing that a patient may be adjudged dead if the EEG has shown no brain activity for 48 hours. After that, the academy recommended, surgeons should be allowed to remove vital organs for transplantation even before the artificial circulation is shut...
Laymen have always been inclined to regard a bullet or a metal fragment in the heart as a sentence of death. And until World War I, most surgeons agreed. Sometimes they could remove the offending object and the patient would live-but the operations were often as deadly as the fragments. Now a 20-year follow-up of World War II injuries shows that, despite all surgery's advances, in many cases it is still better to leave a bullet in the heart...
...only eight cases was removal of the fragments attempted, and in five the effort had to be abandoned. In one patient, who was opened up twice, a husky piece of metal was too deeply embedded in the right ventricle wall to permit removal. This man, now 42, works part time, and his main complaint is that he was twice subjected to unnecessary surgery. Not one of the 40 men has developed the agonizing pain of angina pectoris. All but two have normal electrocardiograph tracings. Though understandably apprehensive, all but five are working, at least part time, some at active jobs...