New guidance issued on the determination of brain death

This guideline updates the 2010 AAN adult practice guidelines and the 2011 AAP/CNS/SCCM pediatric practice guidelines on the determination of brain death. Because of a lack of high-quality evidence on the subject, the experts used an evidence-informed consensus process to develop the guideline.

"Until now, there have been two separate guidelines for determining brain death, one for adults and one for children," said author Matthew P. Kirschen, MD, PhD, FAAN, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a member of the Child Neurology Society and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. "This update integrates guidance for adults and children into a single guideline, providing clinicians with a comprehensive and practical way to evaluate someone who has sustained a catastrophic brain injury to determine if they meet the criteria for brain death."

Brain death is a state in which there is complete and permanent cessation of function of the brain in a person who has suffered catastrophic brain injury.

"Brain death means that clinicians cannot observe or elicit any clinical signs of brain function," said author David M. Greer, MD, FAAN, FCCM, of Boston University in Massachusetts. "Brain death is different from comatose and vegetative states. People do not recover from brain death. Brain death is legal death."

The consensus practice guideline outlines the standardized procedure for trained clinicians to evaluate people for brain death. As part of this procedure, clinicians perform an evaluation to determine whether there is any clinical functioning of the brain and brainstem, including whether the person breathes on their own. Brain death is declared if a person has a catastrophic brain injury, has no possibility of recovering any brain function, is completely unresponsive, does not demonstrate any brain or brainstem function, and does not breathe on their own.

This guideline includes updates on the prerequisites for brain death determination, the examination and the examiners, apnea testing and ancillary testing.