Brain Death and Organ Donation

Abstract

Human death is used to be defined as the cessation of heart function. However, since the renal transplantation animal experiments of Ullmann in 1902, the development of new technologies and therapeutic procedures for organ dysfunction and failure has led to improvements in organ transplant treatment. The widespread use of internal organ transplantation requires a lot of donors. Accordingly, brain death was introduced as a novel definition of death. There are two commonly used definitions of brain death: whole-brain death and brain stem death. In Japan, brain death is only used as a definition of death when the subject is a potential organ transplant donor. In such cases, whole-brain death is employed as the criterion for death. There has been no increase in the number of organ transplant donors in Japan since the Organ Transplant Act was revised. The development of alternative sources of transplant organs should be examined in future studies.