Kazuo Takeuchi, Honorary President of Kyorin University, who summarized the criteria for brain death for the first time as the leader of a national research group, has passed away.

I was 98 years old.

Mr. Takeuchi was born in Tokyo in 1923. After graduating from the Tokyo Imperial University School of Medicine in 1946, he became a professor at the Kyorin University School of Medicine in 1973 after working as the director of the Department of Neurosurgery at Toranomon Hospital.



In 1985, when he was the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Kyorin University, Mr. Takeuchi summarized the criteria for determining brain death as the group leader of the "Research Group on Brain Death" established by the Ministry of Health and Welfare at that time.



This standard is also called the "Takeuchi standard", and two or more specialist doctors with sufficient experience judge brain death, the patient's brain waves are flat, and reflexes can be seen even if the eyeball or throat is stimulated. Instead, it was decided that brain death would be determined if the patient did not breathe spontaneously.



This criterion is the basis for the currently used criteria for brain death.



After that, the Organ Transplant Law was enforced in 1997, and organ transplants from brain death began to be performed in Japan.



Mr. Takeuchi has been the president of Kyorin University since 1988, and received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1991.



According to the university, Mr. Takeuchi was undergoing medical treatment at a hospital in Tokyo, but died on the 8th of last month at the age of 98.