life after brain damage

[tashy26]

my mum was admitted to hospital with liver problems as she is an alcoholic,she was in there for 2 weeks and couldnt keep no food down so they put her on nill by mouth and after another couple of days put a line in to feed her however she had a cardiac arreset early hours in the night and was out for 16 mins before they brought her back,hosptal now says she is serverly brain damage and wont pull thro its been about another 2 wks since she had the crdiac arrrest and now the hospital have said they have done all the can and took all her food and fluid of her and left her in a ward to pass away.she has now been in the ward for 4 days and is still here and breathing by herself .i just would like to know is there any thing else we could do for her as i dnt want to watch my mum go like this i feel they should at least still be trying to feed or help her but the hosptal wont have any of it,they say theres no hope as they have done a ecg scan and it shows no brain activity??

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi Tashy
Welcome to the MedHelp forum!
I am really sorry to hear about your mother and it is difficult to see one’s mother suffer like this. Is she on life support? If there is no brain activity, then it is a case of brain death (the heart still pumps blood). This is an irreversible condition.  In your mother’s case it could be a case of alcohol intoxication dimming brain response, or a chronic vegetative state, coma, hypothermia or hypoglycemia (common after alcohol withdrawal). This is a tough situation, one that cannot be assessed on net. Please discuss these possibilities with your mother’s treating doctors. Take care!

[Ann0830]

hi tashy, that could be really difficult, other hospitals do feed their patient, like what they called "life support", however in the case of your mom, 16minutes is very long, i wonder why they continued that long,6-7minutes is enough to cause an irreversible brain damage and in medicine we follow certain ethics, but still with the patient's family decision considered as  final. what i mean is other doctors do not go beyond 5minutes when reviving their patients because it could only bring prolonged suffering to patients having irreversible brain damage and being comatosed. i dont wnt to hurt your feelings tashy, i know how hard is it to go through with decisions like this, miracles could happen, but every decisions is up to the immediate family.