I’ve been doing a lot of study on so-called ‘’brain death’’. The consensus is that there is NO true diagnosis of ‘’brain death’’. It’s an invented term used to keep bodies alive for transplant purposes. The term didn’t exist before the 1970’s.
Coma is frequently called brain death. And persistant vegetative state means that the brain is alive even if it’s not functioning at it’s best for the moment.
When it comes to central nervous system injury, EVERYTHING should be considered for treatments. If you can keep a good flow of oxygen to the brain, you reduce swelling and reduce brain cell death thereby allowing dormant areas of the brain to pick up the functions from the areas that are injured. Other things can assist in swelling reduction too, which is what this fish oil/omega 3 fatty acid treatment seeks to look at.
Swelling is the worst thing. Even uninjured areas can and do become injured if the swelling is bad enough.
I think there are a LOT of things that can be done/tried and I am of the opinion that things should be tried. It takes courage because the patient could die anyway. In which case, then ok...but to let a person die without trying, in this day and age, is shameful and suspicous.
I’ve seen a LOT of miracles in my lifetime to know that nobody has a chrystal ball with a time stamp on it for anybody. And brain injuries can have some hugely surprising outcomes. I’ve seen people who were left with a half a brain, fully recover. Some became geniuses even. But the quicker you try to prevent issues, and give the body everything at your disposal to use to fix it, the better.
Our family has also been personally afflicted with injuries such as this. Last night a family member broke his neck..a severe break...and the goal is to prevent any further nerve damage. Thanks to the articles here, I’ve been able to forward the links to his immediate family in the hope that further deteroration can be had, in the hope that a more full recovery is possible.
Lack of hope produces itself....lack...nothing. It produces death.
Bull.
In the United States, brain death is defined as no cerebral activity whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada. A comatose patient is not brain dead. They are comatose. They still have measurable brain activity, however little that may be. Brain dead is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Nothing at all going on upstairs.
The problem is the media loves these recovery stories. As they should. They make people believe in miracles. They'll change the narrative to conclude a patient was "virtually" brain dead or "considered" brain dead when in actuality they were never diagnosed as brain dead in the first place.
No, it's not. The concept of brain death evolved separately from organ transplantation.
The term didn’t exist before the 1970’s.
Yes, it did. Even the Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death dates to 1968. They didn't meet in 1968 to create a term; they were trying to reach an agreement on the definition of 'brain death,' which term was already in use.
You can go back to the 1963 Schwab, Potts, and Bonazzi A. study on using EEGs to determine brain death, and even further.