Brain Death

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anupamaa Seshadri ◽  
Ali Salim

The concept of “brain death” is one that has been controversial over time, requiring the development of clear guidelines to diagnose and give prognoses for patients after devastating neurologic injury. This review discusses the history of the definition of brain death, as well as the most recent guidelines and practice parameters on the determination of brain death in both the adult and pediatric populations. We provide specific and detailed instructions on the various clinical tests required, including the brain death neurologic examination and the apnea test, and discuss pitfalls in the diagnosis of brain death. This review also considers the most recent literature and guidelines as to the role of confirmatory tests making this diagnosis.  Key Words: apnea test, brain death, brainstem reflex, death examination

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilberto Antonelli ◽  
Pinuccia P Calia ◽  
Giovanni Guidetti

Abstract The article analyses the role of institutions in the determination of income inequality in a sample of OECD countries. Basing on the seminal approach by Amable, the article discusses the theoretical definition of model of capitalism. The basic idea is that each model of capitalism is defined by the cobweb of complementary relationships established among different institutions. Using a set of statistical indicators of the operation of institutions in two different years, 1995 and 2010, the empirical analysis points out five models of capitalism and exhibits how their composition has changed in this lapse of 15 years. In the following sections of the article, we investigate the role played by the model of capitalism in the determination of income distribution, measured through a standard Gini index. After controlling for a set of variables, the econometric evidence shows that different models of capitalism present significantly different levels of income inequality.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-508
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Rowland ◽  
Joseph H. Donnelly ◽  
Anthony H. Jackson

Discontinuing ventilatory support for determination of respiratory drive is a recognized means of assessing clinical brain death. Methodology must include a means for assuring adequate oxygenation during the test as well as providing sufficient duration for appropriate hypercarbia. Nine patients with other findings of clinical brain death were prospectively assessed with a standardized apnea test protocol. None demonstrated spontaneous respirations. Whereas adequate oxygenation was maintained in each case, wide variability was evident in degree of hypercarbia and acidosis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 1850013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard O. Barraqué ◽  
Patrick Laigneau ◽  
Rosa Maria Formiga-Johnsson

The Agences de l’eau (Water Agencies) are well known abroad as the French attempt to develop integrated water management at river basin scale through the implementation of the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP). Yet, after 30 years of existence, environmental economists became aware that they were not implementing the PPP, and therefore were not aiming at reducing pollution through economic efficiency. Behind the purported success story, which still attracts visitors from abroad, a crisis has been recently growing. Initially based on the model of the German (rather than Dutch) waterboards, the French system always remained fragile and quasi-unconstitutional. It failed to choose between two legal, economic and institutional conceptions of river basin management. These principles differ on the definition of the PPP, and on the role of levies paid by water users. After presenting these two contrasting visions, the paper revisits the history of the French Agences, to show that, unwilling to modify the Constitution to make room for specific institutions to manage common pool resources, Parliament and administrative elites brought the system to levels of complexity and incoherence which might doom the experiment.


Author(s):  
Ana Cabana ◽  
Colin R. Johnson ◽  
Henry French ◽  
Leen Van Molle

The aim of this debate article is to promote a discussion of a historiographical nature (not ideological, not political) about the meaning, place and role of gender in both the rural past and the rural historiography. The discussion revolves around a variety of questions, ranging from the relevance, the opportunity and the very history of the use of gender category in rural history, to the analysis of gender (im)balances in the community of historians working in this broadly defined field of studies, not to mention the very definition of what is meant by gender. These and other related topics, for which there are no single or definitive answers, are debated here in a roundtable format.


This chapter extends the book’s insights about nature, technology, and nation to the larger history of the modern period. While the modern nation loses its grip as a locus of identity and analysis, attempts to understand the operation, disruption, and collapse of continental and global infrastructures continue to mix the natural and the machinic in ways that define them both. Those vulnerabilities emphasize large-scale catastrophe; historiographically, they mask the crucial role of small-scale failures in the experience and culture of late modernity, including its definition of nature. Historical actors turned the uneven geographical distribution of small-scale failures into a marker of distinctive local natures and an element of regional and national identity. Attending to those failures helps not only situate cold-war technologies in the larger modern history of natural and machinic orders; it helps provincialize the superpowers by casting problematic “other” natures as central and primary.


2018 ◽  
pp. 276-285
Author(s):  
Hilary H. Wang ◽  
David M. Greer

This chapter reviews the history of brain death determination, current guidelines for performing the brain death examination including the apnea test, details of apnea testing, the role of brain dead donors in organ donation, physiologic changes seen in brain dead patients, and the relevant challenges in intensive care unit management of such patients for donor organ optimization. The goal of this chapter is to provide clear guidance for a critical care provider to perform an accurate and thorough brain death examination and to further the reader’s understanding of the historical and legal context surrounding brain death and organ donation in the United States.


Author(s):  
Matthew Guah

By examining the history of what was earlier considered project management, this chapter not only points out lessons from past practices but also justifies the selected definition of VLITP. It also explains the role of project management in a fast business environment. The author has demonstrated such importance by representing VLITP in the form of a major initiative that contains a series of relevant processes in the host organization.


Author(s):  
Alexis Keller

This chapter identifies the principal moments when the definition of arbitration and the institutions and techniques associated with it underwent major changes. It specifically highlights inter-state arbitration, yet its proposed historical lessons illuminates the entire field of international dispute settlement. This history can be divided into five distinct moments. The first, which could be described as the ‘Greek moment’, refers to the systematic use of arbitration by Greek cities to resolve their conflicts. The second, covering the period between 1200 and 1400 ad, witnessed the emergence of the first arbitration procedures under the influence of canonical law and acknowledged the growing power of the popes in the settlement of disputes between states. The third, marked by the Jay Treaty of 1794, initiated a major turning point in the history of arbitration, as it confirmed the role of diplomatic commissions in the peaceful resolution of disputes. The fourth moment, which began with the Alabama case (1871), saw the establishment of the first impartial and independent tribunal. Finally, the fifth moment began with the setting up of the Permanent Arbitration Court in 1899 and the harmonization of arbitration procedures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Tozzo ◽  
Salvatore Scrivano ◽  
Matteo Sanavio ◽  
Luciana Caenazzo

The determination of the post-mortal interval (PMI) is an extremely discussed topic in the literature and of deep forensic interest, for which various types of methods have been proposed. The aim of the manuscript is to provide a review of the studies on the post-mortem DNA degradation used for estimating PMI. This review has been performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and the PRISMA Guidelines. Several analytical techniques have been proposed to analyse the post-mortem DNA degradation in order to use it to estimate the PMI. Studies focused mainly on animal models and on particular tissues. The results have been mixed: while on the one hand literature data in this field have confirmed that in the post-mortem several degradation processes involve nucleic acids, on the other hand some fundamental aspects are still little explored: the influence of ante and post-mortem factors on DNA degradation, the feasibility and applicability of a multiparametric mathematical model that takes into account DNA degradation and the definition of one or more target organs in order to standardize the results on human cases under standard conditions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (12) ◽  
pp. 3843-3861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Lázaro

In this paper, exact closed forms of critical damping manifolds for multiple-kernel-based nonviscous single-degree-of-freedom oscillators are derived. The dissipative forces are assumed to depend on the past history of the velocity response via hereditary exponential kernels. The damping model depends on several parameters, considered variables in the context of this paper. Those parameter combinations which establish thresholds between induced overdamped and underdamped motion are called critical damping manifolds. If such manifolds are represented on a coordinate plane of two damping parameters, then they are named critical curves, so that overdamped regions are bounded by them. Analytical expressions of critical curves are deduced in parametric form, considering certain local nondimensional parameters based on the Laplace variable in the frequency domain. The definition of the new parameter (called the critical parameter) is supported by several theoretical results. The proposed expressions are validated through numerical examples showing perfect fitting of the determined critical curves and overdamped regions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document