COMPLEMENTARY APPLICATION OF THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL METHODS IN THE BRAIN DEATH DIAGNOSIS - PRESENTATION OF A CASE

Abstract

For the last thirty years there is a dilemma in medical science regarding when man is considered dead. Man dies when his brain dies, while the final brain death diagnosis requires some proofs that the brain as an organ has stopped functioning. The clinic criteria are not sufficiently reliable for the brain death diagnosis so that other additional diagnostic tests are added including the ncurophysiological methods. The first applied ncurophysiological method in the brain death diagnostics was electroencephalography (EEG). Since it could not respond to numerous demands, it has lately been applied together with the other diagnostic test. These are primarily different models of the evoked potentials, most frequently acoustic evoked potentials (AEP) and somatosensitive evoked potentials (SEP) obtained by the n. medianus stimulation.Our paper presents two patients whose EEG, AEP and SEP findings just point to the necessity of their complementary application in the brain death diagnostics as well as an addition to the clinic findings and those of other additional diagnostic procedures.

Keywords

• Evoked Potentials
• Electoencephalography
• Brain Death