The "standard position" on organ donation is that the donor must be dead in order for vital organs to be removed, a position with which we agree. Recently, Robert Truog and Walter Robinson have argued that (1) brain death is not death, and (2) even though "brain dead" patients are not dead, it is morally acceptable to remove vital organs from those patients. We accept and defend their claim tha...

BACKGROUND The conjunctival microcirculation has potential as a window to cerebral perfusion due to related blood supply, close anatomical proximity and easy accessibility for microcirculatory imaging technique, such as sidestream dark field (SDF) imaging. Our study aims to evaluate conjunctival and sublingual microcirculation in brain dead patients and to compare it with healthy volunteers in ...

BACKGROUND The growing gap between organ supply and demand remains a worldwide serious problem. Losing dead-brain donor organs can be attributed to several reasons including un-recognition of potential donor by ICU staff, death before official declaration of brain death and high refusal rate of deceased donors' families. OBJECTIVE To study the trend of dead-brain patients' relatives refusal o...

The need for cadaveric organs other than kidneys for transplantation is increasing. Principles and techniques that allow their procurement without jeopardizing renal recovery are outlined. These include utilization of brain dead donors, careful donor selection, and surgery which minimizes warm ischema while avoiding iatrogenic injury. Utilizing this approach, a variety of combinations of organs...