brain death

1. 1.

   death when respiration and other reflexes are absent; consciousness is gone; organs can be removed for transplantation before the heartbeat stops

   Synonymscerebral death

   Broaderdeath

Questions about brain death

What does brain death mean?

brain death means "death when respiration and other reflexes are absent; consciousness is gone; organs can be removed for transplantation before the heartbeat stops".

What is another word for brain death?

Close synonyms include cerebral death. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is brain death a common word?

brain death is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.