Non-heart beating donor

Patent Granted Prior to the introduction of brain death into law in the mid to late 1970s, all organ transplants from cadaveric donors came from non-heart beating donors (NHBDs).[citation needed] Donors after brain-dead (DBD),(beating heart cadavers), however, led to better results as the organs were perfused with oxygenated blood until the point of perfusion and cooling at organ retrieval, and so non-heart beating donors were generally no longer used except in Japan, where brain-death was not legally (until very recently{1997: see Margaret Lock: Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death) or culturally (still) recognized.