Page 39 - Brain Death News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

William la jeunesse is live in los angeles. bring us up to speed, william. we've been keeping an eye on a this case. what happens today? >> reporter: well, jon, one hour from now a superior court judge will hear testimony from two physicians regarding jihi's condition. one from children's hospital in oakland where the surgery was performed. he will say the child is legally dead. the other is paul fisher, chief of neurology of stanford university, asked by the judge to give an independent opinion. the wild charred is a family request for evaluation by a controversy asexpert who believes brain d...

She is a general intern effort with meridian health. so how does someone go into the hospital for a on the sillectomy and emerge from it brain dead? >> a tragedy. within i first heard this story, two things have occurred from the news, she had trouble bleeding and had blood loss. in a child like the this with sleep apnea is at risk for these catastrophic outcomes. that's now we recommend every child or adult going to surgery the anesthesiologists ask simply do you senator? and do additional monitoring to avoid these catastrophic outcomes. >> the hospital is saying, sorry, this is irreversible....

Apnea or chronic copd the carbon dioxide is elevated, the tests can be inaccurate. you diagnose brain death when you don't have it. you want to do more testing, cerebral blood flow for brain activity. >> brain activity. so that's what they'll be doing, taking a look at whether there is any sign of life. >> right. john. once the diagnosis is properly made, there has never been a case of a patient returning. never. >> never. >> so, all right. so her family has to wait for the second opinion and if it comes back negative, what happens then? >> well, doctors legally are allowed to remove patients ...

Breaking ethical problem and joining me now is head of the division of medical ethics at nyu. heart breaking to hear any family talking in the way we heard jahi's family talk but at the same time there is an ethical dilemma here, how does it get resolved? it's an awful tragic situation. your heart has to go out to the mom and family. they had a healthy daughter, she went in for a minor procedure for sleep apnea and sadly she has died. when we hear that term brain death. sometimes people say is that really the same as being dead, it is. it's a different way to pronounce death than when you hear...

Out of those 15,000, five bled so badly that they needed a transfusion just like this young girl did. so out of 15,000, five needed a blood transfusion. a small number, but it's there. those bad outcomes happen. >> let's play a little bit more. this is jahi's mother pleading with the hospital to not pull the plug. >> nobody called the doctor until it was too late. that's the problem. my daughter drowned in her own blood. god is going to help me find out the truth. i don't even have anymore tears. i'm all cried out. i'm angry. >> elizabeth, where does this go next? it's this back and forth here...