Vegetative State Often Misdiagnosed

This report confirms past research demonstrating that many people diagnosed as unconscious—aren’t, or at least, many who are unconscious eventually wake up.

Around a quarter of patients in an acute vegetative state when they are first admitted to hospital have a good chance of recovering a significant proportion of their faculties, and up to a half will regain some level of consciousness, researchers from Belgium found out. Another study shows that around 40% of patients were wrongly diagnosed as in a vegetative state, when they in fact registered the awareness levels of minimal consciousness. Comparing past studies on this issue shows that the level of misdiagnosis has not decreased in the last 15 years. These studies should foster debate about appropriate standards of care for these patients, and about end of life limitations

At the very least.

Here are a few thoughts: First it should give great pause to those who advocate not supplying or quickly removing life support for people with traumatic head injury. Second, when family members claim that they detect signs of consciousness in their “unconscious” loved ones, doctors should be less quick to assert that they are merely seeing “what they want to see.” Third, people ought to consider this problem when determining in an advance medical directive to have themselves dehydrated to death if they become permanently incapacitated.

Of course, what really needs to be done is to reject the notion that people with severe brain injuries are somehow less “human” or are not “persons.” Unless and until we do that, people in these devastated states will not be safe.