Smoochie: Cardiac arrest is a descriptive term, that simply means the heart has stopped. And yes, you are right in that people can have their heart stopped and they're not dead, and (very temporarily!) vice-versa. HOWEVER by the time they get to the legal position of being dead, and cause needs assigning via a death certificate (this does not happen at the point someone is declared 'brain dead' for the purposes of organ transplantation, a certificate can only be issued after the patient is in the mortuary) then cardiac arrest is not acceptable. It is, if you like, the final common pathway for all dead people but not the cause for many. The question is really WHY the heart stopped beating- myocardial infarction (heart attack) would be one common reason- it is NOT the same as a cardiac arrest. In the case of Terri Schiavo, her heart would eventually stop beating (=cardiac arrest) if not fed, but the CAUSE of that would probably been hypokalaemia (low potassium) secondary to starvation/malnutrition. Steve Irwin- stabbed throught the heart. He would have had a "cardiac arrest" but that wasn't the cause of his death- it was either hypovolaemia (low blood volume) secondary to penetrating trauma, or cardiac tamponade secondary to penetrating trauma. In essence, the term "cardiac arrest" is meaningless in assigning a cause of death because it doesn't tell anything of why the heart stoped beating. Hope that enlightens, but maybe it just confuses further!