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A comment on The macabre fate of ‘beating heart corpses’. Parent comment

Re:The macabre fate of ‘beating heart corpses’ by diggernet on Friday November 11, 2016 @01:14PM (#12932889)
Interesting. So it sounds like after some period of time, an MRI or CT should be able to show that a 'beating-heart cadaver' is truly brain dead.

My understanding of comatose/vegetative patients is that it is a different case, where an EEG would actually show some activity. Is that correct?

As for the patient you mention... Wow! Fascinating! What is the definition of 'awake' in his case, how did they not know, and how did they discover??

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Re:The macabre fate of ‘beating heart corpses’ by notanote on Friday November 11, 2016 @03:25PM (#12933991)
A mostly fluid filled skull is not an indication of brain death, in fact there are cases of people with most of their brains spread in a thin layer against their skull. [1]

The name for aware but apparently comatose cases is locked-in syndrome. [2] A nightmare scenario for sure.

[1] http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

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