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 < or =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.