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Nerve Implant Transforms Vegetative Patient Back to "Minimally Conscious"

posted by martyb on Tuesday September 26 2017, @01:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the pathway-to-freedom-or-fate-worse-than-death? dept.

FakeBeldin writes:

Surgery to embed a nerve-stimulating implant in a patient in a persistent vegetative state (15 years), resulted in the patient reverting to a "minimally conscious" state.

After lying in a vegetative state for 15 years, a 35-year-old male patient in France appears to have regained minimal consciousness following months of vagus nerve stimulation, researchers report today in Current Biology.

The patient, who suffered severe brain damage in a car crash, had shown no signs of awareness or improvement before. He made no apparent purposeful movements and didn't respond to doctors or family at his bedside. But after researchers surgically implanted a device that stimulates the vagus nerve, quiet areas of his brain began to perk up—as did he.

His eyes turned toward people talking and could follow a moving mirror. He turned his head to follow a speaker moving around his bed. He slowly shook his head when asked. When researchers suddenly drew very close to his face, his eyes widened as if he was surprised or scared. When caregivers played his favorite music, he smiled and shed a tear.

Note that "respond" is on the level of "turning his head when asked, though that took a minute."

A few thoughts on this:

  • Medical advances are COOL!
    • Hopefully, this advance can help some folks.
  • This makes ethical questions concerning patients in persistent vegetative states more urgent:
    • (e.g. the question of whether/when to pull the plug has become even more confusing)
  • This introduces some new ethical questions:
    • Is it ethical to "bring back" someone after 15 years? (the world has changed quite significantly)
    • Is it ethical to "bring back" someone to a state where they're might just barely be conscious enough to realise how much their state sucks?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:33PM (#573229)

    That research is already complete, most of it done in the 1930-1960 date range. [wikipedia.org] It was shown effective at treating violent psychosis, persistent chronic pain, and hysteria; its developers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949. Patients reported some loss of spontaneity, responsiveness, self-awareness and self-control following the operation, with a post-operative mortality rate as low as 5%. [1]

    Its use as a procedure was discontinued following allegations that it was being applied in undue proportion to women and minorities. [2] Its use has largely been replaced by antipsychotic medications.

    [1] Other side effects include (but are not limited to) confusion, incontinence, increased appetite, considerable weight gain, aphasia, and seizures.

    [2] I was tempted to make a sarcastic "this is why we can't have nice things" remark here, but the tone of my post is already dangerously close to Poe's Law territory. For the humor impaired, the above post is a work of satire, intending to be both informative and darkly humorous. The author does not support brain damage as a medical treatment, and supports efforts to shine light on unequal treatment of the disadvantaged.