This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

AZRIEL PEREL, MD
The Chaim Sheba Medical Center Sackler School of Medicine Tel-Hashomer, 52621 Israel

Arch Neurol. 1991;48(12):1215-1216.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—In the October 1990 issue of the ARCHIVES, Marks and Zisfein¹ have reported a prospective controlled study of apneic oxygenation in 15 patients who underwent apnea tests for brain death. Their results showed that the patients given room air during the test became hypoxic, while those given continuous apneic oxygenation by tracheal cannula had little or no hypoxia at the end of the test. The authors commented that, to their knowledge, their report is the first prospective controlled study of apneic oxygenation and concluded that preoxygenation alone does not prevent hypoxia during apnea tests for brain death.

Other authors^2,3 have previously recommended the use of oxygen supplementation by a catheter via the endotracheal tube. However, both studies included one patient, each of whom developed either extreme hypoxemia² or pulmonary edema and cardiac arrest³ during the apnea test. Indeed, many patients with head trauma . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?