2005/01/01 by Leslie M. Whetstine, Stephen Streat, Mike Darwin +1 · 1 citation
Medicine · #Organ Donation and Transplantation #Organ Transplantation Techniques and Outcomes #Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
paper · pdf · doi:10.1186/cc3894
openalex publication_date 2005/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Contemporary intensive care unit (ICU) medicine has complicated the issue of what constitutes death in a life support environment. Not only is the distinction between sapient life and prolongation of vital signs blurred but the concept of death itself has been made more complex. The demand for organs to facilitate transplantation promotes a strong incentive to define clinical death in a manner that most effectively supplies that demand. We consider the problem of defining death in the ICU as a function of viable organ availability for transplantation.