A new method for retrieving hearts from organ donors has ignited a debate over the surprisingly blurry line between life and death in a hospital — and whether there is any possibility that donors might still experience some trace of consciousness or pain as their organs are harvested.
The new method has divided major hospitals in New York City and beyond. It has been championed by NYU Langone Health in Manhattan, which says it became the first hospital in the United States in 2020 to try the new method. But New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which has the city’s largest organ transplant program, has rejected the technique after an ethics committee there examined the issue.
The new technique, transplant surgeons say, significantly expands the potential pool to patients who are comatose but not brain dead, and whose families have withdrawn life support because there is little chance of recovery. After these patients’ hearts stop, they are declared dead. But hearts are almost never recovered from these donors because they are often damaged by oxygen depletion during the dying process.
