Anne Heche’s Enduring Impact: Lessons in Organ Donation and Traumatic Brain Injuries

Anne Heche was a famous Hollywood actress who passed away from traumatic brain injury at the age of 53 years ⁽¹⁾.

According the doctors, the actress had a brain injury after being involved in a car crash. This form of injury to the brain occurs as a result of abrupt cut off of oxygen, which can be caused by head trauma, stroke, cardiac arrest or suffocation. The actress was travelling at more than 100 miles per hour when her car crashed into her house in Southern California. There was fire in her car and house as a result of the crash. To extinguish the fire and to retrieve her from the vehicle, it took about 65 minutes and 59 firefighters ⁽¹⁾.

After being in the accident, the actress went into a coma and did not regain consciousness and was declared legally deceased. Later she was taken off life support after getting matched with an organ recipient.

Anne Heche was born on May 25, 1969 and her initial acting career consists of playing Marley Love and Vicky Hudson in the soap opera, “Another World.” She was a winner of a Daytime Emmy Award in the years 1989 and 1991. She had worked in various movies, such as Return to Paradise and “Donnie Brasco.”

This is a type of brain injury caused by decreased oxygen supply for a period of time ^{(2, 3)}. This can occur as a result of cardiac arrest, drowning, smoke inhalation or other causes which prevents oxygen/blood from getting to the brain. When the brain cells do not get sufficient oxygen, then they start to die after about 4 minutes ⁽³⁾.  The more time the patient is without oxygen, the higher the severity of the injury. Most of the anoxic brain injuries often result in death or disability.

Full recovery from this type of brain injury is difficult because the brain cells start to die if they do not get sufficient oxygen for even some minutes. Other than this, the different parts of the brain also get affected by reduction in oxygen in a varying pattern. There are some parts of the brain which are less resilient to loss of oxygen. The brain takes about 2% of the body weight; however, takes around 20% of the blood circulation of the body. The brain having such a high requirement of oxygen along with having so much dependency on oxygen makes these injuries more fatal.

Injury to the head is only one of the causes of anoxic brain injury. Cardiac arrest is the commonest cause for anoxic brain injury with stroke being another common cause ⁽⁴⁾. Some of the less causes consist of suffocation or choking, drowning, anesthesia complications, smoke inhalation occurring during a fire, drug overdoses, carbon monoxide etc.

The actress wanted to donate her organs and if she was kept on life support to assess if her organs are viable. Donating organs is possible even after suffering anoxic brain injury. If there was injury to the brain and not to the other organs, then in such cases organ donation can be done. In multiple states, the patient is considered legally dead in case of absence of brain activity even if the body is supported on a ventilator. The organs are then evaluated to see if they are fit to be donated after the patient is brain dead.

The United Network for Organ Sharing says that the heart, heart valves, lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, intestines, tendons, skin, nerve, bone, and corneas can be donated ⁽⁵⁾. By doing this, up to eight people’s lives can be saved and more if there is donation of the tissues also.

America is one of highest performing organ donation and transplant systems in the entire world. Individuals of all races, ethnic groups, ages and medical histories can register themselves as organ donors. A team of specialists will determine if the tissues and organs to be donated are viable based on the medical condition of the donor at the time of death.

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