Is it possible to prevent brain death?

Question

If the brain controls the body through an electro-chemical reaction of sorts and the body sustains the brain by providing it everything else then would it be possible to prevent brain death in patients being transported from the scene of injury?

Would it be possible to revive a recently dead brain through somewhat similar technologies (I am leaning towards organ re-animation coupled with brain stimulation)?

The technology of medicine has advanced so greatly and yet I feel that in some ways we are still very backwards. So what is your opinion on this matter?

Very informative (thanks) - Yet if the brain dies in approximately four minutes after critical organ failure, would it not hence be possible to support the brain through timely compensation of such organic loss?

Also, lets say that the brain itself 'does' die. Is it not possible to rehabilitate a recently-dead brain sufficiently to reactivate (albeit with the likely loss of portions of memory)?

Answer 1

As is so common, some semantics is involved in your question. Death is a state from which no organism, organ, or tissue can return using medical techniques. If it is "revived" then, by definition the subject matter was only near-death.

This is based on a long accepted biological principle that life does not spring from non-living things. Theoretically, if some portion of the brain has not undergone irreparably rapidly degenerating conditions, then it is possible to maintain life in some portion of it and perhaps restore some semblance of health and homeostasis. This would require a constant source of oxygen and glucose (among man other things.) I see no reason that a brain could not be kept alive without most of the body, provided science advances far enough.

There is far more that is unknown about the body and mind than is known. In that sense we are very backward. However, getting a brainstem to meaningfully graft onto a spinal cord is one of many extremely difficult barriers to brain transplantation.

"Reanimating" a heart is not really a matter of converting dead tissue to live tissue. It is most commonly simply restarting the electrical cycles that keep the live heart muscle tissue pumping, either by stimulating a stunned intrinsic system (like the sinoatrial node) or by artificial impulses through a pacemaker. If all the muscle tissue is dead, then "codes blue" are fruitless. In this case, a heart transplant could help if the rest of the body could be maintained alive in the interim.

Answer 2

Brain cells die after 4 minutes without blood flow because of loss of oxygen.

Brains retain knowledge by etching chemical signatures on individual cells, and in bundles of cells. When those cells no longer operate, the knowledge is lost.

Unlike heart, kidney, or other less critical organs, it is impossible to cool the brain to prevent the massive cell death that results when blood stops pumping. You'd have to remove the brain from the cranium - which isn't all that hard, it's the putting back that is the real challenge.

Answer 3

Another reason for brain death, which doesn't necessarily have to do with organ failure, is when there is a traumatic brain injury the brain swells up and since it has no where to go because of the cranium, it herniates - then death.