• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.74-79
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• 2020

It is necessary to expand organ donations of the deceased, as more ethical problems are emerging from the increase in organ donations from the living. As the legal and ethical discussions on donation after circulatory death (DCD) as a field with the potential to expand such domestic organ donation are being held, the need for a social consensus is increasingly highlighted. Organ DCD refers to the donation of an organ from a patient whose spontaneous blood circulation has stopped due to cardiac death. In this study, we aimed to examine whether there are legal and ethical obstacles or medical uncertainties for expanding the practice of DCD. By law, death is recognized as cardiac death, and brain death is recognized as an exception for organ transplantation. Although circulatory death precedes brain death, this paper presents a discussion to begin the process of reaching an ethical and legal agreement on whether or not circulatory death can be recognized as death. Successful implementations of DCD, including Category III DCD, in other countries are currently being reviewed to introduce Category III DCD in Korea.