eMJA     The Medical Journal of Australia

Home | Issues | eMJA shop | My account | Classifieds | Contact | More... | Topics | Search   

Matters Arising

Organ donation after cardiac death: legal and ethical justifications for antemortem interventions

Wendy A Rogers and Bernadette J Richards
MJA 2008; 188 (3): 188

In reply: The issues raised by Rady and colleagues, Tibballs, and Kennedy include claims that antemortem interventions for organ donation after cardiac death (DCD) are harmful, involve inadequate consent procedures, and require abandoning the “dead donor rule”.

To clarify, we advocate the use of antemortem heparin in people with a known desire to be organ donors; we do not advocate potentially harmful or disruptive interventions such as femoral vessel cannulation.

Home | Issues | eMJA shop | My account | Classifieds | More... | Contact | Topics | Search

The Medical Journal of Australia    eMJA  

©The Medical Journal of Australia 2008 www.mja.com.au PRINT ISSN: 0025-729X ONLINE ISSN: 1326-5377