The Health and Welfare Ministry has decided to draw up a new manual for conducting brain wave tests used to determine brain death in potential organ donors, in response to three technical errors in the tests since the Organ Transplant Law came into effect in 1997, ministry sources said Saturday.
The ministry will establish a task force led by Hideaki Nukui, a professor at Yamanashi Medical College, to prepare a manual stipulating, in detail, how to completely remove noise from brain-wave test data, with the aim of providing the manual to medical facilities by March 2001.
The task force comprises experts on determining brain death and medical equipment manufacturers, the sources said.
Of the 10 confirmed cases of brain death since 1997, technical problems have occurred in three cases, including the improper placement of electrodes on the head and tests being conducted again because of electrical interference with the machines, the ministry said.
The movement of people nearby or other medical equipment can interfere with brain wave tests.
In response to the errors, the ministry drew up a manual in October 1999 stipulating the procedures in determining brain death. However, some experts claimed the manual is outdated in its description of brain wave tests and ambiguous in its instructions on where to place the electrodes and related explanations.
Shuji Shimazaki, president of the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine, said, "Precise brain wave tests require many techniques and (a new) manual will improve the quality of brain death determination."
Testuo Kanno, head of the emergency medical center at Fujita-Gakuen Health University, said, "The problems of brain wave tests in brain death judgment have been pointed out, and it appears to me the ministry at last has begun to tackle the issue."