PATIENTS who are in a vegetative state may be able to hear and understand much more than hitherto believed.
Experiments conducted in Cambridge could change the way in which such patients are treated: the results suggest that even those who seem to be comatose can hear, understand and respond.
Decisions to switch off life-support systems, always a controversial area in which the courts are often involved, could become even more fraught.
The experiments, published in Science, were carried out on a 23-year-old woman who suffered serious head injuries in a traffic accident in July last year. Five months after the accident the woman remained unresponsive, although she continued normal cycles of sleeping and waking. Doctors diagnosed her condition as a vegetative state, one in which patients who emerge from a coma appear to be awake but show no sign of awareness.
More at Link...
Experiments conducted in Cambridge could change the way in which such patients are treated: the results suggest that even those who seem to be comatose can hear, understand and respond.
Decisions to switch off life-support systems, always a controversial area in which the courts are often involved, could become even more fraught.
The experiments, published in Science, were carried out on a 23-year-old woman who suffered serious head injuries in a traffic accident in July last year. Five months after the accident the woman remained unresponsive, although she continued normal cycles of sleeping and waking. Doctors diagnosed her condition as a vegetative state, one in which patients who emerge from a coma appear to be awake but show no sign of awareness.
More at Link...
