-
Critical care medicine · Nov 1998
Review Case ReportsIncreased apnea threshold in a pediatric patient with suspected brain death.
- R Vardis and M M Pollack.
- Department of Critical Care, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA.
- Crit. Care Med. 1998 Nov 1;26(11):1917-9.
ObjectiveTo evaluate the current standards for apnea testing in the evaluation of brain death in children.DesignCase report.SettingA tertiary pediatric intensive care unit (ICU).PatientsA single patient admitted to the ICU.InterventionsNone.Measurements And Main ResultsA formal brain death examination was performed on a 4-yr-old male with a diagnosis of acute pilocytic astrocytoma and global cerebral hypoxic ischemic damage secondary to a cardiorespiratory arrest. The patient fulfilled all criteria for brain death, except the apnea test. An apnea test was performed for 9 mins 23 secs, at which time, spontaneous respiratory effort was noted. The respiratory efforts were initiated with a pH of 7.08 and a PaCO2 of 91 torr (12.1 kPa).ConclusionThis case report suggests that current guidelines for apnea testing may lead to erroneous evaluation of medullary-respiratory drive.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*,_underline_or**bold**. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>and subscript<sub>text</sub>. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3., hyphens-or asterisks*. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com) - Images can be included with:
 - For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote..