Friday, June 06, 2008

Death Unwarmed Over

The latest in rapid response teams is in New York City:
The city is considering creating a special ambulance whose crew would rush to collect the newly deceased and preserve the body so that the organs might be taken for transplant.

The "rapid-organ-recovery ambulance", still in the early planning stages, could raise a host of ethical questions and strike some families as ghoulish. But top medical officials in the fire department and Bellevue Hospital say it has the potential to save hundreds of lives.

Generally in the US, only people who die at hospitals are used as organ donors, because doctors are on hand with life-support machinery and other equipment to preserve the organs and remove them before they spoil.

Surgeons have only a few critical hours before kidneys, livers and other body parts suffer damage that renders them unusable.

.... The transplant ambulance would turn up at the scene of a death mere minutes after regular paramedics ceased efforts to resuscitate a patient. The team would begin work almost immediately, administering drugs and performing chest compressions intended to keep the organs viable.

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