Emergency medicine clinics of North America
-
Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · Nov 1987
Case ReportsEthical and legal aspects of the emergency management of brain death and organ retrieval.
Patients brought to an emergency room with profound brain damage can be determined to be unsalvageable but usually cannot be declared brain dead. Most such patients should be admitted to the hospital for physiologic support and formal brain death determination. There are ethical and legal justifications, discussed in this article, for physicians to encourage the families of such patients to consent for them to be organ and tissue donors.
-
Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · Nov 1987
Case ReportsLegal aspects of emergency treatment of the neurologically injured patient.
Brain and spinal cord injuries are medicolegally hazardous for the emergency department staff and prehospital emergency care personnel to handle. The reason for this is because of the severity and permanence of their sequelae. ⋯ They may develop immediately after the injury, or they may develop at an unpredictable time minutes to hours thereafter. This article cites a few examples of neurologic injuries that resulted in litigation against emergency care personnel.
-
Seizures that occur in relation to alcohol withdrawal, following a period of prolonged intoxication in serious alcoholics, constitute a special syndrome with important prognostic and therapeutic implications. Inpatient management is desirable to eliminate other causes of seizures that occur for the first time in adult life and because such patients are at substantial risk for additional seizures and the development of delirium tremens. Drug therapy with benodiazepines may be effective during the withdrawal period but long-term anticonvulsant treatment is of no value.