Resumen:
Introduction: Brain death is generally accepted as a concept to indicate death. It was introduced about 40 years ago, and it was considered the ideal situation for donation of organs. Methods: During this time, however, there have been problems in the understanding of this concept both in the medical profession and in the general population. University students from medical and non-medical schools were tested for their understanding of this concept. Results: Our results show that less than one third of the non-medical students identified brain death as death. The data from the medical students changed as they progressed through their studies, but only 2/3 of the graduating medical class believed that brain death is death. Conclusion: Similar results have been seen in other universities around the world, and a renewed effort on the re-education of the concept of brain death may be worthwhile. Although we cannot extrapolate these results to the general population, the confusion is probably similar; hence an effort should be made to solve this problem. (C) 2010 Sociedad Espanola de Neurologia. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.
