[Brain death: is it an appropriate term?]. / Muerte cerebral: ¿es un término adecuado?

INTRODUCTION: Brain death is generally accepted as a concept to indicate death. It was introduced about 40 years ago, and it was considered the ideal situation for donation of organs. METHODS: During this time, however, there have been problems in the understanding of this concept both in the medical profession and in the general population. University students from medical and non-medical schools were tested for their understanding of this concept. RESULTS: Our results show that less than one third of the non-medical students identified brain death as death. The data from the medical students changed as they progressed through their studies, but only 2/3 of the graduating medical class believed that brain death is death. CONCLUSION: Similar results have been seen in other universities around the world, and a renewed effort on the re-education of the concept of brain death may be worthwhile. Although we cannot extrapolate these results to the general population, the confusion is probably similar; hence an effort should be made to solve this problem.