Are DCD Donors: Dead?(Report‪)‬

Donation after cardiac death protocols are subject to two constraints. The first is that organ removal must occur as soon as possible after cardiac arrest. The second is that it must not occur so soon that the donor is not yet dead. Can both constraints be satisfied at once? DCD protocols are widely accepted, so arguments for them have apparently been persuasive. But this does not mean they are sound. Ever since brain death came to be understood as death of the whole human being in the 1970s, organ transplantation has, for the most part, been closely linked to it. The typical donor has been somebody declared brain dead while on life support and while the heart continues to beat, thereby keeping the organs suffused with oxygen. However, because relatively few healthy people--people with suitable organs--have died in just this way, the number of organs available for transplantation has been much less than the number of people needing them. One strategy for making up the difference has been the introduction of donation after cardiac death protocols, which provide for vital organ donation from people declared dead on the basis of cardiac death.