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1 month ago

The organ donation boom complicating the boundary between life and death

Instead of death being declared because the brain has stopped functioning, in DCD, death is declared after circulation ceases and the heart stops beating. | Miguel Porlan for Vox Emily Hoffman was walking home from lunch in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in February 2023, when a driver turning left struck her on the crosswalk. Hoffman was 34. By the time paramedics arrived on the scene, she had gone into a traumatic cardiac arrest. They strapped her onto a machine that delivered automated chest compressions and rushed her to UPMC Presbyterian, a major trauma hospital in...