Retrospective study of brain death cases between April 2010-1 May 2018 at the Faculty of Medicine of Dicle University.

Objectives: Until recently, the "death situation" was expressed by the heart's arrest; in our time, in case of brain death the patient can be accepted as dead even if it is a heart beat, this clearly shows the change. " Brain death " is the permanent loss of all activities of the entire brain, brainstem and cerebellum, which are the parts of the central nervous system in the skull. The Turkish society of Neurology considers the concept of brain death as "all brain death" in accordance with the point of view of our society. All brain death refers to the state of medical death. Many systemic diseases, traumas and neoplasms result in brain damage and brain death can occur after this damage. Diagnosis of brain death is of great importance because of the possibility that these cases are organ donors. Potential donor patients are those with cerebrovascular events, including subarachnoid hemorrhage, head trauma, and hypoxic encephalopathy. In this context, the probability of confrontation in the daily practice of the neurologist is quite high compared to other departments. Hemodynamic changes in a patient who develops brain death are serious hazards to the potential organs to be transplanted. In this study, we performed a retrospective study of demographic characteristics and laboratory data of brain death cases. In our study, which was performed between April 1, 2010 and May 1, 2018, we retrospectively evaluated the rate of diagnosis of brain death, hospitalization diagnoses of patients, duration of diagnosis of brain death, the rate of donor transplantation of the patients diagnosed with brain death, the time between somatic death after the diagnosis of brain death, the ratio of medical branches involved in the diagnosis of brain death, auxiliary diagnostic tests and imaging methods used, the biochemical laboratory values of the patients on the day of hospitalization and brain death diagnosis.