Faculty Bibliography

OBJECTIVES: We sought to 1) evaluate how pediatricians approach situations in which families request continuation of organ support after declaration of death by neurologic criteria and 2) explore potential interventions to make these situations less challenging. DESIGN: A survey on management and personal experience with death by neurologic criteria was distributed electronically to pediatric intensivists and neurologists. We compared responses from individuals who practice in states with accommodation exceptions (accommodation states where religious or moral beliefs must be taken into consideration when declaring death: California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York) to those from non-accommodation states. SETTING: United States. SUBJECTS: The survey was opened by 254 recipients, with 186 meeting inclusion criteria and providing data about the region in which they practice; of these, 26% were from accommodation states. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: More than half of physicians (61% from both accommodation states and non-accommodation states) reported they cared for a pediatric patient whose family requested continuation of organ support after declaration of death by neurologic criteria (outside of organ donation; range, 1-17 times). Over half of physicians (53%) reported they would not feel comfortable handling a situation in which a pediatric patient's family requested care be continued after declaration of death by neurologic criteria. Nearly every physician (98%) endorsed that something needs to be done to make situations involving families who object to discontinuation of organ support after declaration of death by neurologic criteria easier to handle. Respondents felt that public education, physician education, and uniform state laws about these situations are warranted. CONCLUSIONS: It is relatively common for pediatricians who care for critically ill patients to encounter families who object to discontinuation of organ support after death by neurologic criteria. Management of these situations is challenging, and guidance for medical professionals and the public is needed.

Although the concept of brain death is accepted by the majority of physicians, lawyers, ethicists and society at large, controversies about determination of death by neurological criteria persist, and often reach the public eye. In this article, we examine four prominent controversial brain death cases from 2013-2016. We review current controversies, including protocol variability, recognition of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) criteria for brain death as an accepted medical standard, and management of objections to discontinuation of organ support after determination of brain death. Brain death remains conceptually and legally valid, and it is vital that these issues are solved. We argue that medical societies and governmental regulatory bodies must support the AAN criteria in order to decrease protocol variability, and must fully endorse the validity of these criteria as accepted medical standards.

BACKGROUND: Three recent lawsuits that address declaration of brain death (BD) garnered significant media attention and threaten to limit physician power to declare BD. METHODS: We discuss these cases and their consequences including: the right to refuse an apnea test, accepted medical standards for declaration of BD, and the irreversibility of BD. RESULTS: These cases warrant discussion because they threaten to: limit physicians' power to determine death; incite families to seek injunctions to continue organ support after BD; and force hospitals to dispense valuable resources to dead patients in lieu of patients with reparable illnesses or injuries. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians, philosophers, religious officials, ethicists, and lawyers must work together to address these issues and educate both the public and medical community about BD.

BACKGROUND: The morbidity, mortality, and monetary cost associated with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is devastatingly high. Several scoring systems have been proposed to prognosticate outcomes following ICH, though the original ICH Score is still the most widely used. However, recent research suggests that systemic physiological factors, such as those included in the APACHE II score, may also influence outcome. Additionally, no scoring systems to date include pre-morbid functional status. Therefore, we propose a scoring system that incorporates these factors to prognosticate 3- and 12-month functional outcomes. METHODS: We used the Random Forest machine learning technique to identify factors from a dataset of over 200 data points per patient that were most strongly affiliated with functional outcome. We then used linear regression to create an initial model based on these factors and modified weightings to improve accuracy. Our scoring system was compared to the ICH Score for prognosticating functional outcomes. RESULTS: Two separate scoring systems (ICHOP3 and ICHOP12) were developed for 3- and 12-month functional outcomes using GCS, NIHSS, APACHE II, pre-morbid modified Rankin scale (mRS), and hematoma volume (3-month only). Patient outcomes were dichotomized into good (mRS 0-3) and poor (mRS 4-6) categories based on functional status. AUCs in the derivation cohort for predicting mRS were 0.89 (3-month) and 0.87 (12-month); both were significantly more discriminatory than the original ICH Score. CONCLUSION: The ICHOP scores may provide more comprehensive evaluation of a patient's long-term functional prognosis by taking into account systemic physiological factors as well as pre-morbid functional status.

Objective: To evaluate which factors are associated with use of single brain death exam (SBD) vs two (dual) brain death exams (

Objective: To evaluate potential factors that played a role in the consent rate in a large tertiary hospital over a period of 11 years. Background: Many patient, family and hospital factors have been associated with obtaining consent for organ donation after brain death (BD), including decoupling, trained requester and translation. Design/Methods: We evaluated all BD declarations in our hospital between 2006 and 2016 regarding consent for donation. We cross-matched the hospital electronic medical records with the records of the local organ procurement organization to identify this population. Results: The Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) spoke to 199 families (58.7% African American (AA), 47.2% female, mean age of 48.2 years). Another 39 families were never approached. There was a 71.4% consent rate. There was no significant relationship between sex, admission diagnosis, ICU (neuro vs. medical vs. surgical), physician speciality (neurology vs. other), time from event to BD declaration or religion and decision to donate. Families were more likely to consent to donation if the patient was non-AA (87.3% vs 62% if AA, p<0.001), had developed diabetes insipidus (72.3% vs 27.7%, p=0.008), was younger (46.6+/-17.3 vs 52.1+/-15.6 years, p= 0.039), had a lower BUN at the time of death (17.7+/-16.7 vs 24.4+/-20.3 mg/dL, p=0.027), and had a higher PaO2 at the time of the apnea test (225.2+/-129.8 vs 185.9+/-111.8 mmHg, p=0.041). In a logistic regression model, only AA race and PaO2 independently predicted refusal of donation (odds, 95%CI, 4.9, 2-12.1, p=0.001 and 0.996, 0.993-0.999, p= 0.013, respectively). Conclusions: Although the majority of BD patients in this large series were AA, their families were almost 5 times less likely to consent for organ donation than non-AA families. There is an urgent need to explore the reasons for low donation rates in this population

OBJECTIVE The authors sought to determine the effects of eliminating the use of prolonged prophylactic systemic antibiotics (PPSAs) in patients with subdural and subgaleal drains. METHODS Using a retrospective database, the authors collected data for patients over the age of 17 years who had undergone cranial surgery at their institution between December 2013 and July 2014 (PPSAs period) or between December 2014 and July 2015 (non-PPSAs period) and had subdural or subgaleal drains left in place postoperatively. RESULTS One hundred five patients in the PPSAs period and 80 in the non-PPSAs period were identified. The discontinuation of PPSAs did not result in an increase in the frequency of surgical site infection (SSI). The frequency of Clostridium difficile (CDI) and the growth of resistant bacteria were reduced in the non-PPSAs period in comparison with the PPSAs period. In the 8 months after the drain prophylaxis protocol was changed, $93,194.63 were saved in the costs of antibiotics and complications related to antibiotics. CONCLUSIONS After discontinuing PPSAs for patients with subdural or subgaleal drains at their institution, the authors did not observe an increase in the frequency of SSI. They did, however, note a decrease in the frequency of CDI and the growth of resistant organisms. It appears that not only can patients in this population do without PPSAs, but also that complications are avoided when antibiotic use is limited to 24 hours after surgery.

We sought to evaluate whether television and cinematic coverage of brain death is educational or misleading. We identified 24 accessible productions that addressed brain death using the archives of the Paley Center for Media (160 000 titles) and the Internet Movie Database (3.7 million titles). Productions were reviewed by two board-certified neurologists. Although 19 characters were pronounced brain dead, no productions demonstrated a complete examination to assess for brain death (6 included an assessment for coma, 9 included an evaluation of at least 1 brainstem reflex, but none included an assessment of every brainstem reflex, and 2 included an apnea test). Subjectively, both authors believed only a small fraction of productions (13% A.L., 13% J.W.) provided the public a complete and accurate understanding of brain death. Organ donation was addressed in 17 productions (71%), but both reviewers felt that the discussions about organ donation were professional in a paucity of productions (9% for A.L., 27% for J.W.). Because television and movies serve as a key source for public education, the quality of productions that feature brain death must be improved.

In 1968, the definition of death in the United States was expanded to include not just death by cardiopulmonary criteria, but also death by neurologic criteria. We explore the way the definition has been modified by the medical and legal communities over the past 50 years and address the medical, legal and ethical controversies associated with the definition at present, with a particular highlight on the Supreme Court of Nevada Case of Aden Hailu.