Talk:Clinical death

message: clinical death can be caused by things other than cardiac arrest, also cardiac arrest does not always cause clinical death. - Cohesion ☎ 07:29, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
:cardiac arrest is part of clinical death's definition, I think no causative liaison is meant here.Seforadev 10:41, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cardiac arrest 

message: There is already a Wikipedia article on Near-death experiences.  Appending a section on NDEs to this article-- a section even longer than the original article itself --is redundant and wholly inappropriate.  I am deleting the NDE material, retaining only the Related article link.Cryobiologist 05:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NDE Material 

message: Cardiac arrest can occur many minutes after respiratory arrest, as in near drowning.  Cardiac arrest promptly causes respiratory arrest, but respiratory arrest does not promptly cause cardiac arrest.  I have reverted the recent edit that confuses these issues.Cryobiologist 21:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Respiratory Arrest vs. Cardiac Arrest 

message: There is a recent (May 7, '07) Newsweek article titled "To Treat the Dead" which talks about new research that indicates it is not oxygen starvation that damages the brain cells, but instead it is the reintroduction of oxygen after circulation had previously stopped that causes the brain cells to "commit suicide" by apoptosis.  Could someone find a better source for this information and update the article accordingly?  Thanks. -- HiEv 20:34, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Brain cells die due to re-oxygenation" information 

message: basically if you are going use clinical definitions, then you should quote clinical references not a vague etymological reference that itself partially contradicts the premise of the entry.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.242.187 (talk) 21:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is full of Sh*t 

message: In Limitations we have both used within paragraphs of each other, with no explanation for the difference:
"The brain, however, appears to accumulate ischemic injury faster than any other organ. Without special treatment after circulation is restarted, full recovery of the brain after more than 3 minutes of clinical death at normal body temperature is rare.[6][7]"
[...]
"In 1990, the laboratory of resuscitation pioneer Peter Safar discovered that reducing body temperature by three degrees Celsius after restarting blood circulation could double the time window of recovery from clinical death without brain damage from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. " Lamerc (talk) 14:51, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  3 mins or 5? 

message: I deleted the paragraph claiming that the case of Velma Thomas was some kind of record for survival of clinical death because the 17 hours of absent brain function mentioned is neither a record for survival of absent brain function nor, more importantly, is it a record for survival of clinical death because absent brain function is not circulatory arrest ("clinical death"). Cryobiologist (talk) 07:15, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alleged Velma Thomas Record 

message: The reasoning Cryobiologist gave for this deletion was substantive information, and therefore well intentioned, but lacked substantiating references. I suggest the reasoning was not only (1) absent necessary references but also (2) overly simple-minded.
(1) If there are, as Cryobiologist claims, better examples than Velma Thomas, then those examples should be added. That wouldn't necessarily mean the Thomas info should be deleted, because the Thomas example is controversial, and the counterexamples might either be also controversial, or might involve super high modern tech (and therefore be irrelevant to the point of the Thomas example).
(2) The point of the Thomas case is not to teach or prove medical info, and should not be included or deleted on such grounds. It is, rather, an illustration that at any given point in history science sometimes does not know everything about a situation - in fact universally does not know everything about any situation. That's why the Thomas case should be included, not to support superstition or unwarranted skepticism about doctors' end of life decisions, but to illustrate that there are sometimes unexpected results, and that we need to accept and deal with controversy.  It's vaguely analogous to how I might wish there were no "anti-vaxxers" and "stolen election" people, but foolish to pretend they don't exist and delete mentions of them from Wikipedia (though those are extreme examples, not saying Thomas is in that league.) Maxwell Gerald Anderson (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your feedback.  I'm sorry that my explanation of the deletion wasn't clear enough.  I'll try to make it clearer.  As indicated in the first phrase of this Wikipedia article, "Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing."  Velma Thomas wasn't removed from life support because she was mistaken as clinically dead.  Life support, which includes a ventilator that supports breathing, keeps a patient's lungs and heart working so that blood circulation keeps going.  Someone on life support is not clinically dead, by definition.  The news media contention is that Ms. Thomas's brain stopped working for a time.  That's not clinical death.  "Clinical death" as the term is used in scientific literature, and as defined in this Wikipedia article, doesn't mean a clinician has pronounced someone dead.  Clinical death means blood circulation has stopped.  It's a very specific term.  Ms. Thomas's blood circulation wasn't stopped when her life support was removed.  She's therefore not an example of record survival of clinical death.  She might be an example of something, but not anything relevant to this article about clinical death. Mention of her case in this article is off-topic. Cryobiologist (talk) 00:22, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Let me preface this by saying I see you (Cryobiologist) have been shepherding this Wikipedia entry for many years, I don't know who added the now-deleted Velma Thomas section or when it was added, and I can't find any simple instructions as to the proper way to reply to your latest Talk comment, so my apologies if I'm doing this all wrong. Velma Thomas was claimed to meet your definition of "Clinical death means blood circulation has stopped." three times, and also the alternate definition of clinical death which you don't accept of stopped brain functioning. Perhaps it would be most appropriate if you could resolve this by adding a See Also cross reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_syndrome ? Maxwell Gerald Anderson (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, her heart was reported to have stopped normal beating.  That is indeed clinical death, just as it is for thousands of other people who survive that condition, even multiple times when there is trouble reestablishing a consistent perfusing cardiac rhythm.  However the claim of encyclopedic significance for her case was the claim that her interval of stopped brain activity-- while her heart was beating --was a record interval of clinical death.  The problem with that is that absence of brain activity while the heart is beating isn't clinical death.  Her length of stopped brain activity wasn't anywhere near a record for survival of stopped brain activity either, but that's a separate subject.  Nor is it even an example of misdiagnosis of legal death, since withdrawal of life support doesn't imply legal death either, but that's also a separate subject.  The point is that stopped heartbeat and respiration correlated with stopped blood circulation is the definition of clinical death, not stopped brain activity.  Anecdotes of stopped brain activity while blood circulation continues are off-topic for an article about stopped blood circulation.  A record survival of clinical death would be a record survival of stopped blood circulation.  I'm getting the impression that maybe what you are trying to say is that determinations of legal death are sometimes in error, but this isn't an article about determination of legal death.  It's an article about stopped blood circulation, which for historical reasons unfortunately and confusingly happens to be called "clinical death." Cryobiologist (talk) 01:17, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Velma Thomas paragraph