You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Research Article
Apnoea testing to confirm brain death in clinical practice.
  1. C A van Donselaar,
  2. J D Meerwaldt,
  3. J van Gijn

    Abstract

    In six patients an apnoea test was carried out to confirm brain death according to a protocol recommended in the USA. After ten minutes' apnoea the pCO2 did not reach the target value of 7.98 kPa (60 mm Hg) in any of these patients. This was caused by the low initial value and the slow increase of the pCO2. Moreover, we could not confirm the belief that the necessary duration of the apnoea test can be predicted by assuming a rise of the pCO2 of 0.33 kPa (2.5 mm Hg) per minute.

    https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.49.9.1071

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

      Request Permissions

      If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.