What is the vegetative state?
Complete absence of behavioral evidence
for self or environmental awareness
- There is preserved capacity for
spontaneous or stimulus–induced arousal, evidenced by sleep–wake cycles
i.e. patients are awake, but have no awareness. This means that the patients
appear awake.
- They have normal heart beat and
breathing, and do not require advanced life support to preserve life and
cannot produce a purposeful, co–coordinated, voluntary response in a
sustained manner, although they may have primitive reflexive responses to
light, sound, touch or pain.
- They cannot understand,
communicate, speak, or have emotions and are unaware of self and
environment and have no interaction with voluntary passage of urine or
stools. They sleep and awaken. As the centers in the brain controlling the
heart and breathing are intact, there is no threat to life, and patients
can survive for many years with expert nursing care.
- The following behaviors may be
seen in the vegetative state:
- Sleep–wake cycles with eyes
closed, then opened. Patient breathes on her own; spontaneous blinking
and roving eye movements; produce sounds but no words; visual pursuit
following an object with her eyes; grimacing to pain; changing facial
expression; yawning; chewing jaw movements swallowing of her own spit no
purposeful limb movements; arching of back; reflex withdrawal from
painful stimuli; brief movements of head or eyes toward sound or movement
without apparent localization or fixation; startles with a loud sound.
Almost all of these features consistent
with the diagnosis of permanent vegetative state were present during the
medical examination of Aruna Shaunbag. Behavior suggestive of a minimally
conscious not vegetative state observed during the examination.
No comments:
Post a Comment