Word: houben
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...Nearly all of his voluntary muscles were paralyzed - including those controlling eye movement - but his brain functioned almost completely normally. He suffered from "locked-in syndrome," in which patients are aware of their surroundings but unable to communicate to the outside world. In the past three years, Houben has learned to talk through a computer: a language therapist traces his finger over a keypad and when it hovers over the desired letter, he contracts a muscle in his finger. He now has plans to write a book. "I screamed, but there was nothing to hear," Houben recently told a journalist...
...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...