Kirschen MP, et al. - Researchers assessed pediatric patients declared brain dead in the US for their epidemiology and clinical features. Using the Virtual Pediatric Systems national multicenter database, all patient deaths between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2017 were abstracted. They analyzed patient demographics, pre-illness developmental status, severity of illness, cause of death, pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) medical and physical length of stay, and organ donation status. They also compared patients who were declared brain dead to those who sustained cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary death. Deaths of 15,344 patients were reported, of which, 3,170 (20.7%) were declared brain dead. Findings revealed the occurrence of brain death in one-fifth of PICU deaths; no preexisting neurological dysfunction was detected in most of these children, and the majority had acute hypoxic-ischemic or traumatic brain injury. Even in large PICUs, infrequent brain death determinations were reported.