(LifeSiteNews) A 36-year-old mother without brain activity woke up after hearing the voice of her one-year-old daughter, one of many incidents that calls into question the long-held medical understanding of so-called “brain death.”
Father Michael Orsi, who has heard the play-by-play of the remarkable episode from one of the nurse anesthesiologists involved, told LifeSiteNews that the woman recently went to the hospital for a double endoscopy. While patients normally wake within five to 10 minutes of the end of the procedure, the mother did not wake up – hospital staff found her heart had stopped.
She received CPR, and soon her heart was beating on its own again. Believing she had suffered a stroke, they sent the mother to receive an MRI and found she had no brain waves. She was then transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) and put on a respirator to help her breathe.
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After two days in ICU, the husband told the nurse on duty that if his wife could only hear the voice of her one-year-old daughter she would be OK. Amazingly, when he prompted his daughter to speak over his cell phone to her mother, she woke up. She was “in perfect condition,” according to Orsi.
The priest has verified the details of the chain of events with the woman’s doctor, Omar Hussein, who has also confirmed to LifeSiteNews that the mother woke up upon hearing the voice of her daughter. Hussein has said there is no way he can scientifically explain what happened.
However, the longtime medical “consensus” on brain death in the U.S. has been contested by various doctors, some of whom point out that patients can indeed go on to recover consciousness after meeting what has been considered official criteria for brain death.
Dr. Heidi Klessig recently explained that such cases of recovery after flatline EEGs (no brainwaves) can likely be attributed to a condition called Global Ischemic Penumbra, or GIP:
Like every other organ, the brain shuts down its function when its blood flow is reduced in order to conserve energy. At 70 percent of normal blood flow, the brain’s neurological functioning is reduced, and at a 50 percent reduction the EEG becomes flatline. But tissue damage doesn’t begin until blood flow to the brain drops below 20 percent of normal for several hours. GIP is a term doctors use to refer to that interval when the brain’s blood flow is between 20 percent and 50 percent of normal.
During GIP, the brain will not respond to neurological testing and has no electrical activity on EEG but still has enough blood flow to maintain tissue viability – meaning that recovery is still possible. During GIP, a person will appear “brain dead” using the current medical guidelines and testing but with continuing care they could potentially improve.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at LifeSiteNews and is reprinted here with permission.
