Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Best interests decide location of brain stem death testing: Court of Protection orders repatriation abroad, prioritising patient’s wishes, beliefs and cultural ties under the 2025 Code and MCA 2005

Published on: 24 October 2025

Published by a LexisNexis Private Client expert

Legal News

Article summary

London NHS Trust v DT and another [2025] EWCOP 36

What was the background?

The applicant, a London NHS Trust, asked the Court of Protection for declarations in relation to DT, a 42-year-old woman, the Official Solicitor acting as her litigation friend, and her sister YT named as second respondent. Before 23 August 2025, DT was well; she became unwell on a flight and collapsed at an airport in Country Z, thereafter never regaining consciousness. She sustained cardiac arrests and required mechanical ventilation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, with intervals of absent blood flow to vital organs, including the brain, causing hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury. At her family’s request, DT was moved to the Trust’s London hospital in mid-September 2025, where her condition remained unchanged; EEG demonstrated no persuasive cerebral activity and MRI showed severe brainstem damage. Clinicians considered DT likely to be brain stem dead and that brain stem testing, in accordance with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges 2025 Code of Practice for the Diagnosis and Confirmation of Death (the 2025 Code), was necessary to establish and confirm death. The family, profoundly shocked by what had happened, declined consent for brain stem testing in London and instead...

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