Cardiac death and heart transplant - the ethical and clinical questions
In the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, several articles discuss different aspects of heart transplantation. One interesting aspect is about reversing the irreversible - donating hearts after cardiac death.
It used to be that organ donation can only occur after cardiac death, e.g. after a donor’s heart has completely stopped. Organs such as kidneys can then be transplanted from the donor to the recipient. However, this posed a challenge for heart transplant since the donor’s heart is dead and has irreversibly stopped, and is therefore not viable for transplantation anymore.
Raquel Billiones has a PhD in Biology and has over 15 years experience as a researcher, scientific English teacher, and medical writer. Since 2006, she has been a freelance WAHM specializing in medical writing and scientific documentation. 
