Ethics & Health Law News

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Archive for category Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States

Paralysed British man ‘blinks’ to stay alive

Jul 14

Posted by Nancy Lentz in Accidents, Clinical Ethics, End-of-life Decisions, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States | Comments off

Channel 9 News, AP, 14 July 2010

“Richard Rudd was left paralysed in the arms and legs after the motorcycle he was riding hit a car at high speed in October 2009, BBC News reports. Mr Rudd, 43, was unable to respond to family members or doctors. His relatives agreed to it was time to let him go after recalling a conversation where he had told them he would not want to be trapped in a useless body.  “To keep someone alive whilst they’re suffering and they’re not going to get better, it’s playing God, if you like, because it’s going against nature,” Mr Rudd’s father, Richard, told the BBC.”

Find article here.

Eluana Englaro, chronicle of a death foretold: ethical considerations on the recent right-to-die case in Italy

Jun 8

Posted by Edwina Light in End-of-life Decisions, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States | Comments off

J Med Ethics 2010;36:333-335 (doi:10.1136/jme.2009.034835)
Author: Marco Luchetti
“In 1992, Eluana Englaro was involved in a car accident in Italy that eventually left her in a permanent vegetative state requiring artificial nutrition and hydration. This paper, after briefly reviewing Eluana’s case, gives a chronicle of Eluana last months until her death on 9 February 2009, and discusses the right-to-die controversy in Italy.”
Find abstract here.

In the Blink of the Mind’s Eye

May 17

Posted by Edwina Light in End-of-life Decisions, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States, Substitute Decision-Making | Comments off

Hastings  Center Report 40, no 3 (2010): 21-23
Authors: Joseph J. Fins and Nicholas D. Schiff
“Imagine your loved one has had a serious brain injury. The doctors tell you that the patient is unconscious and will not recover. Still reeling from the sudden news, you are asked about any end-of-life care preferences. … If only you could ask . . .Now imagine rolling your loved one down to the hospital’s MRI machine and asking him if he wants to live or die by reading his responses on the scanner. This is still the stuff of science fiction, but researchers have just reported in the New England Journal of Medicine how functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, might someday be used as a communication tool for patients with disordered conscious, in the vegetative and minimally conscious states.”
Find abstract here.

Treatment Decisions after Brain Injury — Tensions among Quality, Preference, and Cost

May 16

Posted by Nancy Lentz in Death, End-of-life Decisions, Informed Consent, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States, Substitute Decision-Making | Comments off

NEJM, By Robert Holloway MD, and Timothy Quill MD, 13 MAy 2010

“Many patients with sudden severe brain injury from stroke, trauma, or cardiac arrest die after family members and clinicians decide, given a poor prognosis, to withdraw treatment. Although it’s difficult to estimate precisely how prevalent this trajectory to death is, as many as 60% of deaths from stroke, heart disease, and traumatic brain injury may involve some kind of treatment withdrawal, which makes it one of the most common pathways to death in the United States.”

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Childrens Hospital sued over issue of consent for infant’s surgery

Apr 13

Posted by Sabina Bhate in Children, Informed Consent, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States, US Health Services | Comments off

Los Angeles Times- 13 April, 2010

Author: Molly Hennessy-Fiske

“What happened next is at the root of a $19-million civil lawsuit filed by Rivas against the hospital and two of his son’s doctors. Rivas, a Spanish speaker, last week told the jury hearing the case in Los Angeles County Superior Court that he never consented to surgery that he says left his son brain-damaged.”

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Dangerous delusion of recovery: Rom Houben

Mar 6

Posted by Nancy Lentz in Clinical Ethics, End-of-life Decisions, Futility, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States | Comments off

The Australian, By: David Charter, 6 March 2010

“The 46-year-old’s brief period of lucidity was a fantasy, his doctors declared after carrying out further tests. The issue has led to bitter recriminations between medics, carers and relatives who are refusing to abandon the approach that had apparently brought Houben back to life.  As well as raising painful questions about the true state of his consciousness, the case has implications for hundreds of other brain-injury patients suspected by their families of retaining full awareness while lacking the physical means to communicate.”

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Murky Path in Deciding on Care at the End

Feb 23

Posted by Sabina Bhate in End-of-life Decisions, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States, Refusing Treatment | Comments off

New York Times- 22 February, 2010

Author: Gina Kolata

“There may be situations when futile care can be appropriate, one doctor says. And the other writes that all the rational decision-making and evidence-based medicine so popular today can vanish in an instant when emotions come into play — when the patient with dementia is not an anonymous old woman but your own grandmother.”

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Cogito Ergo Sum by MRI

Feb 22

Posted by Edwina Light in Bioethics, Competence and Capacity, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States | Comments off

NEJM, 362(7):648-649.
Author: Allan H. Ropper
“What is left of the human being when the brain is badly damaged has been a question for philosophers and theologians. Now, however, an imaginative series of experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, culminating in the article by Monti and colleagues in this issue of the Journal, has revealed a form of preserved cognition in ostensibly unconscious patients.”
Find editorial and research article here.

Coma patient ‘can’t talk after all’

Feb 21

Posted by Nancy Lentz in Biomedical Research, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States | Comments off

Channle 9 News, AEST, By Maria Cheng 20 February 2010

“Other experts questioned the method Houben was apparently using to communicate. The technique is known as “facilitated communication”, in which the patient supposedly directs the hand of a speech therapist who typed out his thoughts.”
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Expert minds change on brain injury

Feb 14

Posted by Nancy Lentz in Biomedical Research, Disability, Futility, Organs and Tissue, Post-Coma Unresponsiveness and Vegetative States | Comments off

Sue O’Reilly, The Australian, February 13, 2010

“But now experts such as Sydney-based neonatologist Nadia Badawi recognise that brains are plastic, potentially revolutionising treatment of damaged brains and of people with devastating disabilities such as cerebral palsy.”

Find article here.