Ryan Marlow, a father of three, was rushed to the emergency department in a hospital in North Carolina last month after contracting the foodborne disease listeria. He suffered severe brain swelling and slipped into a coma before he was declared clinically brain dead on August 27, News.com.au reported.
The doctor's announcement left Marlow's family shocked. He qualified for organ donation and his family has been getting ready to say goodbye to him when something miraculous happened.
A man lies on the operating table.
Wife Tells Her Husband's Brain Death Misdiagnosis
In North Carolina laws, doctors can legally pronounce a person deceased if they do not detect any brain activity. Megan, Ryan's wife, said that the doctor has pronounced her husband clinically deceased after suffering brain death. Her husband's time was recorded on his chart and she was called to tell her that her husband qualifies to become an organ donor.
Ryan was supposed to have his honor walk on Tuesday before his organ donation surgery, news.com.au reported. She was accompanied by her mom before the organ donation process begin and see him stop breathing on his own.
But two days later since Ryan was proclaimed dead, the doctor called Megan and said that her husband suffered traumatic brain damage and changed his time of death from August 27 to August 30, just before his organs are due to be harvested for organ donation.
She explained that the doctor called her Monday night and told her that they called an expert panel because her husband's case is so rare. They said that they had made a mistake and that he neither passed away nor suffered neurological death, which means he is not brain dead.
Ryan suffered a traumatic brain stem injury and was still basically brain dead, the doctor said. But the morning when his life support was supposed to be turned off and his organs harvested, his family played videos of his children and they saw his feet slightly moved. Megan went into his room and told him to fight if he is still in there as she will stop the organ donation process.
Ryan was once again tested for further investigation. The tests revealed that he is not indeed brain dead because they detected blood flow in his brain. Doctors said that Ryan is in a deep coma and is still very critical. There have been twitches, foot movements, and elevated heart rates but he has not opened his eyes. Nonetheless, he is still alive instead of dead and is still currently in the hospital.
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Why Sudden Movements Occur After Brain Death
Better Health Channel said that brain death is different from a coma because the latter means the patient is still alive but unconscious, while the former occurs when a critically ill patient dies after being on life support.
For example, a heart attack could cause brain death but the heart could still continue to beat while the ventilator delivers oxygen to the lungs. Since the patient is already dead, they will not be able to breathe if the ventilator is switched off.
Although sometimes sudden movements from brain-dead patients could give their families hope, doctors say that it is unlikely. Science Daily cited a study published in the journal Neurology that suggests these sudden movements occur more commonly in many patients than previously thought.
The researchers detected these sudden movements in 39% of the brain-dead patients in their study. Dr. José Bueri, a neurologist at J. M. Ramos Mejia Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina at that time said that these movements are spinal reflexes that do not involve brain activity. these movements were seen in the first 24 hours since the brain death diagnosis, and no movement was recorded after 72 hours.
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