What Is the Ideal Brain Criterion of Death? Clinical and Practical Considerations
The UDDA Revision Series
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The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) defines death by neurologic criteria (i.e., brain death) as “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem … in accordance with accepted medical standards.”1 The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and other professional organizations have outlined these best accepted standards,2,3 which at the least involves identification of “an established neurologic diagnosis that can lead to the complete and irreversible loss of all brain function”; confirmation that confounding conditions and mimickers are absent; and a bedside clinical examination that demonstrates coma, brainstem areflexia, and inability to breathe spontaneously.4
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org/N for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
Submitted and externally peer reviewed. The handling editor was Editor-in-Chief José Merino, MD, MPhil, FAAN.
See page 86
- Received October 19, 2022.
- Accepted in final form March 7, 2023.
- © 2023 American Academy of Neurology
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