Family wants to keep life support for girl brain dead after tonsil surgery #2

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  • #621
You're welcome. I wondered the same thing, but I assume it is because the hospital won't let him (and his machine) into their facility.

She already had EEG done which was negative. Seems like his device is portable and measures EEG.
I am not sure why the fact that this device is portable is going to make any difference.
 
  • #622
She already had EEG done which was negative. Seems like his device is portable and measures EEG.
I am not sure why the fact that this device is portable is going to make any difference.

Free advertizing.
 
  • #623
I dont see anywhere it states this device is used to determine brain death, if I am wrong, someone can point it out to me.....
 
  • #624
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  • #626
Thanks for the link, CCmakes3

snipped from that link,

He hoped to conduct that test for Jahi by first working with the family to get her transferred to another hospital.

Why can't he do it now, today?


Neurovigil founder Philip Low says the family of Jahi McMath can use his iBrain, the world's first mobile brain scanner designed to map brain wave patterns that can be matched up to various thoughts.

Read more: http://www.kfbk.com/articles/kfbk-n...hes-out-to-help-brain-11936509/#ixzz2p4Kpt7QJ

MOO, she'd first have to have some brain wave patterns.
 
  • #627
I dunno.... :dunno: Maybe I'm already too jaded. It would appear to me that this neuroscientist is looking for his 5 minutes, for his "machine". It appears to be a high resolution EEG. So, what? He will see no brain activity, only it will be in high resolution? :waitasec:

I tend to agree. I think he needs high profile case-studies to publicize his device.
 
  • #628
I dont see anywhere it states this device is used to determine brain death, if I am wrong, someone can point it out to me.....
Its in the article and contributed to the devices creator. The site for the device just says it can be used for many things or something to that effect.
 
  • #629
She already had EEG done which was negative. Seems like his device is portable and measures EEG.
I am not sure why the fact that this device is portable is going to make any difference.

Agreed.
 
  • #630
It appears, from this article, that this neuroscientist has been helping them look for another facility all along. My question is why doesnt he bring his mobile brain scanner (high res imagery) to CHO and run the tests on Jahi now?

I assume he doesn't have treating privileges at CHO. I don't think he is even a doctor. I am guessing they would open themselves up to some sort of liability if they just let anybody with a machine come in and run tests on patients in their hospital.
 
  • #631
  • #632
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  • #636
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...n-to-Keep-Girl-on-Life-Support-238139271.html



The family enlisted the help of Dr. Paul Byrne in Ohio, a Catholic doctor who told NBC Bay Area last week that "brain death" is not "true death,".....

The majority of Western doctors, neuro scientists and ethicists, however, don't agree with Byrne.

Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, said .....that there are a "tiny number of religious groups who don't accept brain death until there is cardiac death."

But state law considers brain death the same as "death." And Caplan said Children's Hospital doctors got into an unusual position when they didn't simply take Jahi off the ventilator the first time the EEG came back negative. Instead, they gave the family more than a few minutes to say goodbye.

And in that time, a slippery slope was created, Caplan said. He asked rhetorically if the Jahi case now will have people running "to court if they refuse to accept ...death?"
[/url]


SBM

The thing about the religious distinction between cardiac death and brain death is that it doesn't really exist. (JMO, and I'm not looking for a religious debate, just musing). Sure, there are holy scriptures and religious texts that state things that imply that to have a heartbeat is to be alive, or something to that effect.

But all or most of the important holy scriptures of the major religions of the world were written hundreds or thousands of years ago, long before the advent of modern medicine. They never take any official stand in this debate, they never say, "thou didst not kill thy neighbor if he is only dead inside his head but thou shalt bury him when his heart stops beating" or anything else that openly settles the debate. (JMO, I haven't read them all and I will stand corrected if someone points out a relevant passage but I am reasonably certain that no one will.)

And here is why: back then when the scriptures were written, the problem simply never came up. Brain death did not exist as a concept. There were no reliable neurological examination methods that would have let you determine whether someone has EEG activity or blood flow in their brain and even if some enlightened individuals figured out that the lack of brain stem reflexes meant something they must have been very few and far between and any injured candidates for testing would have died long before any of them could arrive at the bedside.

There simply were no brain dead people who lingered on and you never had to decide whether they were alive or dead. Most sick and injured people died long before the stage where modern neurologists would begin to discuss doing a brain death evaluation. If someone had a stroke or a serious brain injury they were likely to die in the early stages. If a teenager got uncontrolled bleeding and bled out, that was that. There were no blood transfusions. If someone got a heart attack, he didn't get resuscitated with a hypoxic brain injury and brain swelling that led to eventual brain death - he died of the heart attack. End of story.

If there ever was anyone who managed to survive long enough to become brain dead they failed the apnea test immediately and cardiac death followed very shortly thereafter.

Brain death and cardiac death were one and the same thing, back then, part of the same general death area, so to speak, so close that they were indistinguishable.


So imo it's not justifiable to claim that any of the old religions take any stand in this matter when the question simply never comes up.
 
  • #637
It appears at the "minimum", the families lawyer has stretched the truth in the court filings.
 
  • #638
Yes the State of California and the CHO would be able to access the results. NY isn't a foreign country!


BBM. Based on what legal standing?
 
  • #639
  • #640
This is such a bizarre situation. There is a child that died in a hospital due to post-surgical complications. Other children have died as a result of the same complications after the same surgery. It's a known risk. Because the child died in a hospital, machines were immediately available to preserve the body.

For whatever reasons, the family wants the body to be preserved indefinitely. We have a doctor with strong opinions about organ transplant perhaps suggesting to the family that hospitals are eager to declare patients brain dead so that organs can be harvested. However, we know that a family can refuse to donate organs, so that seems irrelevant. We also have a lawyer claiming that there are facilities that preserve the bodies of deceased people indefinitely. Then, we have a judge that seems to want to err on the side of caution, and who has ordered another extension so the family can arrange to transfer the deceased to a facility that preserves deceased bodies with a ventilator.

None of this makes any sense to me. It almost seems like common sense is something from the past.
 
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