Miller Fisher syndrome, a brainstem encephalitis, mimics brain death.

Miller Fisher syndrome is a rare focal encephalitis of the brainstem characterized by cranial nerve palsy, ataxia, and areflexia. While this condition usually is mild and self-limiting, as this case documents, findings may fulfill many of the criteria in the clinical examination for brain death. Unlike brain death, however, it is not associated with irreparable structural damage of the brain or, as is mandatory, does it fulfill a very important prerequisite of brain death, the exclusion of potentially reversible causes of coma. Treatment of Miller Fisher syndrome is supportive.