PVS

Detecting hidden consciousness in vegetative state patients

Jared Yee | 09 September 2011

Some patients previously thought to be unconscious are in fact aware of themselves and their surroundings, according to Dr Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario.

The dead more alive than the “vegetative”?

Jared Yee | 02 September 2011

It has been easy to tell between the living and the dead. However, modern medicine has created a new option: persistent vegetative state (PVS).

UK mother asks for daughter’s life support to be withdrawn

Michael Cook | 15 April 2011

Should food and water be removed from unresponsive patients? The cases in the newspapers nearly always feature dramatic conflicts between a flint-hearted medical bureaucracy wanting to pull the plug and tearful relatives desperate to keep them alive.

Rwandan woman being fed again

Michael Cook | 18 March 2011

A Rwandan woman in a permanent vegetative state whose feeding tube had been removed against her family’s wishes is being fed again.

Brain-damaged immigrant’s feeding tube removed

Michael Cook | 05 March 2011

A court-appointed guardian has removed feeding tubes from a 58-year-old comatose grandmother in a Maryland nursing home who has no health insurance and whose children cannot afford to pay for hospice care.

False alarm: Belgian man in coma will not be writing a book

Michael Cook | 20 February 2010

Facilitated communication proved false

Catholic care for PVS patients under fire

Michael Cook | 11 February 2010

Compassion and Choices says guidelines are arrogant and stern

Ariel Sharon enters fifth year of coma

Michael Cook | 15 January 2010

Still unresponsive

Media got it wrong about Belgian coma recovery man

Michael Cook | 15 January 2010

Newsweek special investigation

Belgian coma man wrongly diagnosed for 23 years

Jared Yee | 28 November 2009

Debate over facts