Background: Brain death diagnosis relies on clinical signs, but confirmatory tests are legally mandatory in some countries. In France, transcranial Doppler (TCD) is not recognized as a legal test to confirm brain death. Nevertheless, experts recommend its use to determine the need for a legal confirmatory test. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that TCD shortens the time between clinical brain death and computed tomography angiography (CTA) confirmation.
Methods: We conducted a prospective randomized controlled study to evaluate the benefit of a TCD-directed strategy before performing the CTA to confirm brain death. Once the clinical diagnosis of brain death was established, subjects were randomized in a conventional group (CTA 6 hr later as recommended in France) or a TCD group (TCD examination every 2 hr until intracranial brain death flow patterns were found). Forty-four subjects were needed to show a difference of 2 hr between the two strategies.
Results: TCD strategy resulted in a shorter time between clinical diagnosis of brain death and CTA confirmation compared with conventional strategy (2.0 [1.3-2.6] vs. 7.2 [6.3-9.5] hr, P<0.0001). The number of brain CTA performed to confirm the diagnosis of brain death was not different between groups.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that TCD-directed strategy allows reducing the time between clinical diagnosis of brain death and CTA confirmation.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01070563.