BIOETYKA / WPROWADZENIE

Our primary purpose is to define irreversible coma as a new criterion for death. There are two reasons why there is need for a definition: (1) Improvements in resuscitative and supportive measures have led to increased efforts to save those who are desperately injured. Sometimes these efforts have only partial success so that the result is an individual whose heart continues to beat but whose brain is irreversibly damaged. The burden is great on patients who suffer permanent loss of intellect, on their families, on the hospitals, and on those in need of hospital beds already occupied by those comatose patients. (2) Obsolete criteria for the definition of death can lead to controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation.

Irreversible coma has many causes, but we are concerned here only with those comatose individuals who have no discernible central nervous system activity. If the characteristics can be defined in satisfactory terms, translatable into action – and we believe this is possible – then several problems will either disappear or will become more readily soluble.

A Definition of Irreversible Coma, s. 85