Turkish Journal of
GERIATRICS

Hacettepe Ãœniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Nükleer Tıp Anabilim Dalı, ANKARA Diagnosis of brain death had gained great importance after the success of organ transplantation.The early diagnosis in the organ donor patients is essential for the success of the transplantation. For the clinical diagnosis the signs of apnea, loss of brain stem reflexes, coma are needed. Currently, there are various methods used for the early diagnosis of brain death including radionuclide cerebral angiography, four-vessel contrast angiography, Digital-subtraction Angiography, Computed Tomography with constrast, Transcranial Doppler Ultrasonography, “Somatosensory evoked potentials”. Among these methods brain scintigraphy is used for the evaluation of brain and brain stem. Being a non-invasive, cost-effective and easily applicable method, scintigraphy is used frequently. In this article the authors discuss brain death and the role of scintigraphy in diagnosis in detail. Keywords : Brain Death, Scintigraphy, Nuclear Medicine.