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Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Rethinking coma and PVS

We've been taught to think of a coma as a state of unconsciousness from which a patient can not be aroused. But for the past twenty-plus years, a few innovative doctors and facilities have been working from another paradigm: of coma as a state of unconscousness from which the patient has not yet been aroused. Therein can lie the difference between life and death.

With so many people agitating for the deaths of patients like Terri Schiavo, it's about time we look again about how "hopeless" their situations really are or aren't.

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