Are non-heart-beating donors really dead?

Brain dead patients are ideal donors for organ transplantation. The lack of organs has aroused new interest in other kinds of patients who are called non-heart-beating donors. In these donors the warm ischaemia time should be as short as possible. This problem has led to a discrepancy between a proper diagnosis of death and a fast organ procurement. In non-heart-beating donor protocols the death should be determined in an unambiguous manner that can also be accepted in other situations. The best solution would be to create one set of criteria of death that can be applied to all situations. Brain death as the criterion of death also in patients with asystole would serve this purpose.