Benefits of combination of electroencephalography, short latency somatosensory evoked potentials, and transcranial Doppler techniques for confirming brain death

Objective： Optimization of combining electroencephalography （EEG）, short latency somatosensory evoked potentials （SLSEP） and transcranial Doppler （TCD） techniques to diagnose brain death. Methods： One hundred and eleven patients （69 males, 42 females） from the major hospitals of Zhejiang Province were examined with portable EEG, SLSEP and TCD devices. Re-examinations occurred 〈12 h later. Results： The first examination revealed that the combination of SLSEP and EEG led to more sensitive diagnoses than the combination of SLSEP and TCD. Re-examination confirmed this and also revealed that the combination of TCD and EEG was the most sensitive. Conclusion： The results show that using multiple techniques to diagnose brain death is superior to using single method, and that the combination of SLSEP and EEG is better than other combinations.