Subtotal Cerebral Circulatory Arrest With Preserved Breathing Activity: A Case Report

A suspicion of brain death (BD) is the 1st step in the process of BD certification. Owing to its utmost importance, the process must yield an unequivocal answer so that the committee for the determination of BD has no doubts. We present a case of a patient with suspected BD, with a diagnosis of no intracranial flow in 4-vessel digital-subtraction angiography, who developed some reflexes just before clinical examination for BD assessment. The source of clinical findings was determined to be an extracranial blood supply, which enabled the preservation of trace lower brain stem functioning.