CCB Rules No Jurisdiction Where Patient Declared Brain Dead

Every so often, we are consulted with respect to whether or not a medical team must keep a patient connected to life support at the insistence of a family, even where that patient meets the criteria for a neurological determination of death. We have consistently advised that the team may discontinue, without consent, because the continued interventions are not "treatment". The Consent and Capacity Board (CCB) has recently provided some welcome clarification supporting this view.

The CCB has released two decisions in the past month which conclude that it has no jurisdiction to hear applications connected to the withdrawal of mechanical ventilation from a patient in respect of whom there has been a neurological determination of death (brain death).1

The CCB held that the reason it does not have jurisdiction is...