brain dead girl

New York facility is ‘last hope’ for girl declared brain dead, family say

The family of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old girl declared brain dead after complications from routine tonsil surgery, said Saturday a hospital in New York may be able to accept her and keep her on life support.

The girl’s uncle and lawyer wouldn’t provide the hospital’s name, saying they don’t want media attention to hurt her chance of being accepted and transferred there.

“It’s an organization that believes in life,” attorney Chris Dolan told the Associated Press.
“It’s our last, last hope,” he said after two facilities in California that agreed to accept Jahi decided to back out.

A nursing home in the San Francisco Bay Area that had been willing to care for the girl if she had two tubes inserted changed its mind. Dolan said a facility in the Los Angeles area also withdrew its offer because it didn’t want media attention or to jeopardize its relationship with its doctors, who refused to treat someone who’s been declared brain dead.

Time is short for the family, as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo on Tuesday ruled that the Children’s Hospital Oakland may remove Jahi from a ventilator at 5 p.m. Monday unless an appeal is filed.

Jahi underwent a tonsillectomy at the hospital on Dec. 9 to treat sleep apnea. After she awoke from the operation, her family said, she started bleeding heavily from her mouth and went into cardiac arrest. Doctors at Children’s Hospital concluded the girl was brain dead on Dec. 12 and wanted to remove her from life support. The family said they believe she is still alive.

Before Jahi can be transferred, she must undergo two more medical procedures — the insertion of a breathing tube and a feeding tube.

“Children’s Hospital Oakland does not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice,” David Durand, its chief of pediatrics, said in a statement Thursday.

Douglas Straus, a lawyer for the hospital, said in a letter made public Friday that before the hospital would comply with the family’s request to move Jahi, it would need to speak directly with officials at any nursing home to make sure they understand her condition, “including the fact that Jahi is brain dead” — and to discuss needed preparations, including transportation.

“Children’s Hospital will of course continue to do everything legally and ethically permissible to support the family of Jahi McMath. In that regard, Children’s will allow a lawful transfer of Jahi’s body in its current state to another location if the family can arrange such a transfer and Children’s can legally do so,” Straus wrote in the letter.

He also said the Alameda County coroner needed to sign off on the move “since we are dealing with the body of a person who has been declared legally dead.”

Dolan said he had already obtained signed consent from the coroner for Jahi’s transfer. The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau said it had no comment.

He said Saturday he was waiting to hear from the New York hospital after its facility director and medical director speak.

Hospital spokeswoman Cynthia Chiarappa said the hospital has not heard from any facility to discuss how it can accommodate “a deceased body on a ventilator.”

source: Nbc news

Judge orders Calif. hospital to keep teen declared brain dead on ventilator

With a family fighting a hospital to keep their daughter who has been declared brain dead on life support, a California judge on Monday ordered the hospital to keep treating 13-year-old Jahi McMath for another week as a second medical evaluation is conducted.

Jahi experienced complications following a tonsillectomy at Children’s Hospital in Oakland.

As her family sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom, an Alameda County judge called for Jahi to be independently examined by Paul Graham Fisher, the chief of child neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The judge also ordered the hospital to keep Jahi on a ventilator until Dec. 30, or until further order from the court.

The examination was expected to occur later on Monday, and early Tuesday.

Hospital staff and Fisher will conduct an electroencephalogram, or EEG, and tests to see if blood is still flowing to Jahi’s brain.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital concluded the girl was brain dead on Dec. 12 and wanted to remove her from life support.

Jahi’s family wants to keep her hooked up to a respirator and eventually have her moved to another facility.

The family said they believe she is still alive and that the hospital should not remove her from the ventilator without their permission.

“It’s wrong for someone who made mistakes on your child to just call the coroner … and not respect the family’s feeling or rights,” Sandra Chatman, Jahi’s grandmother who is a registered nurse, said in the hallway outside the courtroom.

“I know Jahi suffered, and it tears me up.”

The family’s attorney also asked Judge Evelio Grillo to allow a third evaluation by Paul Byrne, a pediatric professor at the University of Toledo. The hospital’s attorney objected to Byrne, saying he is not a pediatric neurologist.

The judge is expected to take up the request to use Byrne, and another hearing was scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Byrne is the co-editor of the 2001 book “Beyond Brain Death,” which presents a variety of arguments against using brain-based criteria for declaring a person dead.

In a phone interview, Byrne said he could not comment in detail because he had not seen any of Jahi’s medical records. But the fact that her ventilator is still functioning properly is a sign that she is alive, he said.

“The ventilator won’t work on a corpse,” he added. “In a corpse, the ventilator pushes the air in, but it won’t come out. Just the living person pushes the air out.”

Jahi’s family says the girl bled profusely after a tonsillectomy and then went into cardiac arrest before being declared brain dead.

Outside the courtroom, Dr. David Durand, chief of pediatrics at Children’s, said that staff have the “deepest sympathy” for the family, but that Jahi is brain dead.

“The ventilator cannot reverse the brain death that has occurred and it would be wrong to give false hope that Jahi will ever come back to life,” he said.

Durand said Jahi’s surgery was “very complex,” not simply a tonsillectomy.

“It was much more complicated than a tonsillectomy,” Durand said. He refused to elaborate, citing health care privacy laws.

Arthur L. Caplan, who leads the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center and is not involved in Jahi’s case, told The Associated Press that once brain death has been declared, a hospital is under no obligation to keep a patient on a ventilator.

source: abc news