Don't expect life after death: doctor
He says strict testing means organ donors won't be wrongly declared dead
Stringent safeguards are in place so that patients are not wrongly declared brain dead and possibly have their organs harvested while they are still alive, says a doctor who specialises in the area.
While mistakes do happen, there have been no cases reported in Hong Kong of people "coming back to life" during the organ donation process, said Dr Chan Wai-ming, chief of Queen Mary Hospital's intensive care unit.
He said a series of tests must be performed before a person was declared brain dead - and he hoped more people would consider organ donation.
In July, US media revealed the case of Colleen Burns, who woke up as doctors were about to harvest her organs in a New York hospital four years ago. She had suffered a multidrug overdose and been pronounced dead.
Chan said almost all organ donors in Hong Kong were brain dead and there were strict procedures in place for testing the patient to prevent mistakes. "Of course, humans make mistakes," he said. "But for experienced doctors, the heart stopping and brain death are very obvious."
Drug overdoses were the main grey area, Chan said. High doses of sleeping pills and sedatives, for example, might produce symptoms that looked like brain death. But a drug overdose did not lead to brain damage, which could be confirmed by tests. Earlier this year, Singapore's Straits Times reported the case of Suzanne Chin, who awoke from a coma three days after admission to a Hong Kong hospital in 2009 following a heart attack. She recovered, but doctors had said she was brain dead and advised her husband to cut off life support.