Abstract
The short-acting barbiturate widely used as depressant is commonly used in intracranial hypertension. It has been more than twenty years since the first reports by Shapio et al. [6,7] describing the efficiency of high dose barbiturates as depressants of increased intracranial hypertension in neurosurgical patients. Patients who are treated with barbiturate as depressants of cerebrospinal pressure, are given extraordinary high doses of barbiturates. They show the respiratory arrest and suppression of nervous system, therefore they may be misdiagnosed as brain death. Practically, barbiturate coma must be excepted from the state of brain death. Although diagnosis of brain death has to be performed considering the level of brain barbiturate concentration, it is impossible to examine the brain. The barbiturate concentrations are practically examined in the blood only.
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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Saito, T., Takeichi, S., Nakajima, Y. (1995). Influence of Antemortem Medication on the Determination of Brain Death. In: Mangin, P., Ludes, B. (eds) Acta Medicinæ Legalis Vol. XLIV 1994. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-79523-7_61
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-79523-7_61
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