Trump: 'It's a disgrace what happened to Otto'

[BeyondGeography]

38. They do know something happened to his brain a long time ago

Based on magnetic resonance images of Warmbier’s brain, his status is not likely to substantively improve. The scans showed “extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of his brain.” That means his brain was deprived of oxygen and/or blood for a long time, and tissue died everywhere—much the same process that happens to brain cells in a particular area of the brain when a person has a stroke, everywhere.

This MRI also makes it possible to say whether a stroke is recent or not. People in early stages of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury sometimes improve; people in remote stages do not. Warmbier’s brain injury is in a remote stage. His doctors reported that it happened more than a year ago.

What caused this type of diffuse cellular death throughout the entire brain?

This can be the result of asphyxiation, including by exposure to poisonous gas, and by cardiac arrest of innumerable possible causes. The doctors reported yesterday that the most likely caused was “cardiopulmonary arrest.” That isn’t much of a hypothesis—almost begging the question, in that it means his heart and/or lungs ceased to supply his brain with oxygen...

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/could-botulism-cause-severe-brain-injury/530586/