BRAIN DEATH

Abstract

Brain death is a total irreversible cessation of the brain functions. The diagnosis of brain death is very important for organ transplantation not for discontinuing therapy as brain death has never been aprerequest for withdrawal of treatment. Our retrospective study was done to identify aclear medical consensus about brain death including what criteria must be met before a patient may be considered as brain dead. Our study was carried out on 100 patients who admitted in ICU of Tanta University Hospital with traumatic head injury and developed brain death, we selected patients with GCS < 7 and we divided the patients into two groups at the time of admission according to GCS. All patients had intravenous line, arterial line, central catheter, urinary catheter and underwent the monitoring of blood pressure, pulse, temperature and recieved the care of comatosed patients. The demographic data, haemodynamic status. temperature neurological tests of the brain, radiological data by CT scan, clinical criteria of brain death were recorded and we selected the time of admission, the time of declaration of brain death and after it by 6, 12 hours in our study.