clinical death
Noun
Meaning
clinical death (countable and uncountable, plural clinical deaths)
(medicine, law) A state in which usual medically observable vital signs—such as respiration, heartbeat, and corneal reflex—are not present, but from which patients are sometimes revived.
Synonyms
Related terms
Examples
A patient with working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring.
He applied the same argument to the process of dying itself, saying that the early stages of clinical death may be reversible in the future.