Word: coma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...HOUBEN, a Belgian man who was mistakenly presumed to be in a coma for 23 years after becoming paralyzed in a car crash. A recent journal article revealed that doctors, using new scanning techniques, discovered in 2006 that Houben, who could not speak, had normal brain function. He now communicates using a special keyboard...
Three years ago, Dr Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, examined a comatose 43-year-old Belgian patient, Rom Houben, who for the past 23 years had been assumed by medical professionals to be brain dead. Laureys, who runs a coma study group specializing in such cases, performed sensitive clinical and imaging tests on Houben and made a startling discovery: the former engineering student who suffered a brain injury in a car accident in 1983 was not in a vegetative state at all. (See the top 10 comas...
...past week, Houben's case has raised numerous questions. How common are such diagnostic mistakes? How can they be prevented? Is Houben's communication method really accurate? In the still-evolving field of coma studies, where scientists probe the twilight at the cusp of consciousness, it seems there are few clear answers. (See the year in health from...
...Houben's case come to light? Over the past five years, Laureys and others have studied brain-injury patients classified as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). In such states, patients awake from a coma and return to a normal sleep cycle, but show no signs of awareness or consciousness. Laureys and others have found that around 40% of such patients are misdiagnosed. Most of these misdiagnosed patients fall under a classification called "minimally conscious," in which they show subtle but consistent signs of awareness. (The "minimally conscious" classification was only recognized in 2002 thanks to the work...
...heavily medicated, which may affect their responsiveness when tested by doctors. Popular diagnostic tools may also be to blame. In a study published in the medical journal BMC Neurology in July, Laureys found that one of the main tools for assessing brain function in intensive-care settings - the Glasgow Coma Scale - does not perform well in chronic cases. Laureys wrote that PVS patients should be tested frequently using a standardized evaluation called the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised, which involves more thorough tests such as measuring patients' eye-tracking abilities by moving a mirror slowly over their faces. Laureys and other...