Tag: vegetative

The New York Times recently reported that many people who are/were in a vegetative state and was once considered unable to ever recover, could have recovered.

In other words, people who doctors, judges, families and social workers made life ending decisions, it is now discovered, could have recovered.

Dr. Steven Laureys, an author of the new study and the director of the Coma Science Group at the University of Liège in Belgium, studied people considered in a vegetative state and one of his conclusionsstated, “Bedside clinical examinations can have high rates of misdiagnosis of unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (vegetative state) or minimally conscious state.”

How significant is this misdiagnosis? Among those in a vegetative state, 31% were able to recover into a minimally conscience state or a higher level of consciousness within a year, despite giving no hope of recovery.