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Slowtwitch Forums: Lavender Room:
Persistent Vegetative State? Not so much . . .

 
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vitus979

Jul 3, 08 7:34

Post #1 of 3 (247 views)
Persistent Vegetative State? Not so much . . . Can't Post
Apparently, lots of people who are diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state aren't.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...h/article3004892.ece

Ten years ago, Kate went into a deep coma and was on a ventilator for several weeks. She had suffered severe brain inflammation after contracting a viral infection. When she came out of the coma, she opened her eyes and could breathe naturally, but she was unresponsive to speech and visual stimuli, and appeared to lack all conscious awareness. She was still in this condition four months after falling ill, and was later diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS: in other words, persistently unaware. But the diagnosis was wrong.
Although Kate could not speak, or hear properly, or make any kind of signal, or take in sustenance except through a tube into the stomach, she was sometimes aware of herself and her surroundings. She had a raging thirst that was not alleviated by the ward staff. She was racked with pain. Sometimes she’d cry out, but the ward staff thought it was just a reflex action. Kate suffered so much pain and despair that she tried to take her own life by holding her breath.
Then a Cambridge neuroscientist called Dr Adrian Owen put her in a special kind of scanner and performed an unprecedented experiment. It revealed evidence of fluctuating levels of brain activation when she was presented with pictures of her parents. From that point, she started her long journey back into the world. This is a story about brain-impaired patients who come gradually out of coma into “minimal awareness” after being misdiagnosed as being in PVS: breathing, appearing to be wakeful, yet deemed to be dead to themselves and the world. It is also about the disastrous consequences of such misdiagnoses, estimated in the UK and other countries to be running at two in five cases. And, crucially, it is about a neuroscientific research programme that is set to transform the prospects of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of brain-injured people the world over.
<SNIP>
The biggest, most tragic clinical myth about brain injury today is that PVS can be reliably diagnosed by bedside observation alone. It has in fact been known for at least a decade, ever since a key survey of brain-injured patients, that misdiagnosis of the condition runs at more than 40%, a statistic originally calculated by Professor Keith Andrews, former head of the Putney hospital, and confirmed by recent surveys in Europe and North America. This means that valuable rehabilitation strategies are routinely neglected, and misdiagnosed patients end up on unsuitable wards or in care homes where their needs are neither understood nor met.







"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."


cholla

Jul 3, 08 8:34

Post #2 of 3 (204 views)
Re: Persistent Vegetative State? Not so much . . . [vitus979] [In reply to] Can't Post
Just have Bill Frist watch a videotape of the patient to make a determination as to whether he or she is in a persistent vegetative state. Then, once Frist has made his determination, Congress can decide whether it needs to pass special emergency legislation to override the will of the patient and/or her spouse.


Steve Hawley

Jul 3, 08 11:49

Post #3 of 3 (126 views)
Re: Persistent Vegetative State? Not so much . . . [vitus979] [In reply to] Can't Post
hubris on the part of our medical community and those who've an absolute (as in go ahead and lets hasten this person on to whatever lies on the other side) belief in our current "science."
Steve