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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

So, yesterday, I had a phone call from a very distressed mother of her 39-year-old son who had a motorcycle accident, less than 24 hours before. He’s now being admitted to an intensive care unit with severe fractures, including a traumatic brain injury where apparently, there was some hemorrhagic bleeding going on in the brain that they couldn’t operate on, and they couldn’t decompress the brain. So, now, the family is being told that their son is brain dead and that they will stop life support within the next 24 hours. And I said to this lovely lady that, “The hospital needs to hang on a minute because if someone is brain dead, there needs to be some rigorous brain death testing going on, generally speaking, by two independent doctors. And they both need to come to the conclusion that brain death is evident and only then can the ICU withdraw treatment. Until then, they need to do whatever is within their power to save this gentleman’s life.”

Now, there’s a lot more to it. The next thing probably is, if this gentleman is really brain dead, then the ICU, probably wants to have a talk about organ donation. There is so much more to it, but the gist is this, that before someone is being declared brain dead, two independent doctors need to do independent brain death testing. And they both need to come to the same conclusion that brain death is evident, that there’s evidence for that.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or simply send us an email to [email protected].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org.

If you want the medical record review for your loved one in intensive care or after intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com and contact us.

And, subscribe to my YouTube channel, share this video with your friends and families, give the video a like, click the notification bell, and comment below what you want to see next or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thanks for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I will talk to you in a few days.