Patients in “Persistent Vegetative State” May be Consciously Aware

For years we have been told that people who are unconscious are “vegetables.” Decisions are made every day to withhold treatment and even food and water from patients diagnosed as being in a “persistent vegetative stat (PVS),” using the rationale that these individuals have lives with no meaning.

Now, several studies have been published which challenge the notion that all of these patients are unaware of their surroundings. The most recent appeared in the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet. The researchers did not use MRI to assess function because of cost and physical stress to the patients. They instead used EEG tests to assess patients in two European centers who were diagnosed as “vegetative.” The authors conclude: “These findings confirm that a population of patients exists who meet all the behavioral critera for the vegetative state, but nevertheless retain a level of covert awareness that cannot be detected by thorough behavioural assessment.”

Sixteen patients diagnosed as “vegetative” were compared to 12 patients who were healthy. All of the patients were asked to imagine they were making a fist and wiggling toes. Researchers found that three of the “vegetative” patients (19%) “could repeatedly and reliably generate appropriate EEG responses similar to those of the conscious controls.”

The authors state that their findings substantiate what was learned in previously published, more complex studies using MRI tests. They also state that their research “shows unequivocally that a null EEG outcome does not necessarily indicate an absence of awareness.” In other words, one cannot conclude that patients who did not exhibit EEG responses similar to patients in the control group could still experience awareness.

Burke Balch of National Right to Life states: “The Lancet EEG study, together with earlier functional MRI studies, holds out the hope that we may develop ways to communicate with aware patients who have routinely been diagnosed as ‘vegetative,’ much as today eye movements and blinks are used to communicate with some patients with paraplegia.” There is also hope that medical people will start treating these patients as individuals who deserve, at minimum, to be given food and drink instead of being condemned to a starvation and dehydration death.

Barbara Lyons