clinical death

clinical death (countable and uncountable, plural clinical deaths)

1. (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.
   • 1988, Andrea K. Scott, “Death Unto Life: Anencephalic Infants as Organ Donors,”, in Virginia Law Review, volume 74, number 8, page 1533:

     The body dies in stages, beginning at clinical death, then brain death, biological death, and finally, cellular death.

• clinically dead

• brain death
• information-theoretic death

• “clinical death”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.