Where We Stand
Section: Hospice / End of Life Care / Death & Dying
Subsection: Legal Definition of Death

Legal Definition of Death

OMA, upon recommendation of the Public Policy Committee, adopted the Kansas definition of death:

A person will be considered medically and legally dead if, in the opinion of a physician, based on ordinary standards of medical practice, there is the absence of spontaneous respiratory and cardiac function, and, because of the disease or condition which causes, directly or indirectly, these functions to cease, or because of the passage of time since these functions ceased, attempts at resuscitation are considered hopeless; and in this event, death will have occurred at the time these functions ceased; or

A person will be considered medically and legally dead if in the opinion of a physician, based on ordinary standards of medical practice, there is the absence of spontaneous brain function; and if based on ordinary standards of medical practice, during reasonable attempts to restore or maintain spontaneous circulatory or respiratory function in the absence of aforesaid brain function, it appears that further attempts at resuscitation or supportive maintenance will not succeed, death will have occurred at the time when these conditions first coincide. Death is to be pronounced before artificial means of supporting respiratory and circulatory functions are terminated and before any vital organ is removed for purposes of transplantation.

Adopted at the interim House of Delegates, 1972.
Reaffirmed at the annual House of Delegates, 2011.

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