Khi nào cuộc sống dừng lại? Cách lấy nội tạng mới gây chia rẽ các bác sĩ

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A new method (phương pháp) for retrieving (lấy, thu hoạch) hearts from organ (nội tạng) donors (người hiến tặng) has ignited (kích động) a debate (cuộc tranh luận) over the surprisingly blurry line between life and death (ranh giới mờ nhạt đáng ngạc nhiên giữa sự sống và cái chết) in a hospital — and whether there is any possibility that donors might still experience some trace of consciousness (ý thức) or pain as their organs are harvested (thu hoạch).

The new method has divided major hospitals in New York City and beyond. It has been championed by NYU Langone Health in Manhattan, which says it became the first hospital in the United States in 2020 to try the new method. But NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, which has the city’s largest organ transplant (ghép, cấy ghép) program, has rejected (từ chối, bác bỏ) the technique after an ethics committee (ủy ban đạo đức) there examined the issue.

If adopted more widely, the method will significantly increase the number of hearts available for transplantation, saving lives.

The reason is that most heart donors currently come from a small category of deaths: donors who have been declared brain dead (chết não), often after a traumatic incident (sự cố đau thương) like a car accident. But they remain on life support — their heart beats, and their blood circulates, bringing oxygen to their organs — until a transplant team recovers their organs.

The new technique, transplant surgeons say, significantly expands the potential pool to patients who are comatose (hôn mê) but not brain dead, and whose families have withdrawn life support because there is little chance of recovery. After these patients’ hearts stop, they are declared dead. But hearts are almost never recovered from these donors because they are often damaged by oxygen depletion (cạn kiệt oxy) during the dying process (quá trình chết).

Surgeons (bác sĩ phẫu thuật) have discovered that returning blood flow to the heart (đưa máu trở lại tim), after the donor has been declared dead, will restore it to a remarkable degree, making it suitable for transplant.

source: nytimes,