Doctors, ethicists, and lawyers are to agree a definition for brain death for use by China’s medical community, which many doctors hope will boost organ transplants.
More than 200 delegates from the disciplines of neurosurgery, organ donation, and transplantation from China and elsewhere are expected to attend a conference at the end of April in Beijing hosted by the Organ Transplant Committee to develop a consensus on brain death. The conference is being administered by China’s Ministry of Health and chaired by Jiefu Huang, the vice minister for health.
“The conference will try to work out a definition of brain death that can be universally accepted in medical circles and help promote the spread of the concept and healthy human organ transplants in China,” Mr Huang, whose background is in liver transplant surgery, was quoted as saying by China’s official news agency Xinhua.
By agreeing criteria for brain death China will come closer to internationally accepted practices in organ transplantation by increasing the supply of organs from patients with brain death. Currently many organs suitable for transplant are rendered unusable because China’s legal definition of death is 15 minutes after heartbeat and breathing have ceased.
“Brain death and transplantation must be separate issues, but there must also be a general consensus on the concept of brain death,” said Zhonghua Klaus Chen, vice chairman of the Chinese Organ Transplantation Society and one of the conference organisers. “By the end of the conference this consensus will be finalised, then the Ministry of Health can distribute this to hospitals. Before it becomes enshrined in law, hospitals can then give patients’ families a choice to use the traditional definition of death or brain death.”
Once criteria for brain death become established in the medical community, it will be easier for the legal definition of death to be changed, said Professor Chen.
Together with a team of five colleagues, he has been able to procure 340 organs from 75 brain dead donors to treat 325 patients since he set up the Chinese Organ Procurement Society in August 2006.
“I have so few cases because there is a high rate of failure to donate,” said Professor Chen. “There are many cases where the family is willing to donate but the hospital is unwilling because they are concerned about the potential legal implications. Maybe from May they won’t be so worried.”
