Most people with a persistent vegetative state do not recover any mental function or ability to interact with the environment in a meaningful way. However, a few people with a persistent vegetative state improve enough that the diagnosis is changed to minimally conscious state.
Some people recover from a vegetative state, but it is usually not a complete recovery. The brain damage will likely result in permanent disabilities. Recovery is most likely if the cause of the vegetative state is an injury or a reversible condition such as low blood sugar or a drug overdose.
After 5 years, about 3% of people recover the ability to communicate and understand, but few can live independently, and none can function normally. Most people who remain in a vegetative state die within 6 months of the original brain damage. Most of the others live about 2 to 5 years.
If an individual is diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, recovery is unlikely but not impossible. If due to a traumatic cause, recovery of consciousness is unlikely after 12 months in both adults and children.
Such persons may be able to communicate with, for example, eye blinking. Life expectancy in the persistent VS. Early research8 suggested that life expectancy in this condition was 2-5 years, with survival for 10 years being uncommon. More recent work suggests a somewhat better prognosis for survival.
In this way, Owen and colleagues have convincingly demonstrated that a subset of individuals in persistent vegetative states have meaningfully functioning minds — even as they remain completely unable to engage in other forms of volitional communication or behavior.
However, a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state does not imply permanent disability because in very rare cases (eg, after traumatic brain injury), patients can improve, reaching a minimally conscious state or a higher level of consciousness.
Generally, adults have about a 50 percent chance and children a 60 percent chance of recovering consciousness from VS/UWS within the first 6 months in the case of traumatic brain injury. For non-traumatic injuries such as strokes, the recovery rate falls within the first year.
They do not move, do not react to light or sound and cannot feel pain. Their eyes are closed. The brain responds to extreme trauma by effectively 'shutting down'. Some scientists compare it to being under a general anaesthetic.
Patients in the vegetative state are said to be unaware and to lack the cortical capacity to feel pain (Multi-Society Task Force on PVS, 1994).
Their eyes may also randomly wander or track moving objects, and their breathing and heart rate are able to keep their body going without the assistance of machines. Other actions such as swallowing, smiling, and tearing up as well as groaning, grunting, or screaming are all common in vegetative states too.
In some cases, it may be that the family believe that the patient would have wanted ongoing treatment regardless of their level of consciousness or prognosis. Alternatively, some family members may be hoping for a “miracle” recovery or are simply not yet ready to let go of a loved one.
The Terri Schiavo case was a series of court and legislative actions in the United States from 1998 to 2005, regarding the care of Theresa Marie Schiavo (born Schindler) (/ˈʃaɪvoʊ/; December 3, 1963 – March 31, 2005), a woman in an irreversible persistent vegetative state.
Patients in a vegetative state are awake but unaware. They have sleep/wake cycles with eyes open for prolonged periods but show no evidence of consciousness on physical examination.
Usually, coma patients have their eyes closed and cannot see what happens around them. But their ears keep receiving sounds from the environment. In some cases, the brains of coma patients can process sounds, for example the voice of someone speaking to them [2].
Generally, most patients at a hospital do come out of a coma. Typically, a coma does not last more than a few days or couple of weeks.
The end of juvenile/vegetative phase marks the beginning of the reproductive phase. Many mammals are reproductively active throughout their reproductive phase and hence are called continuous breeders. In monkeys and apes, the cyclical changes that occur during reproductive phase are called oestrus cycle.
The period of growth between germination and flowering is known as the vegetative phase of plant development. During the vegetative phase, plants are busy carrying out photosynthesis and accumulating resources that will be needed for flowering and reproduction. Different types of plants show different growth habits.
In the vegetative phase, which begins at germination and continues through tillering, the tissues of growth (meristems) are busy producing leaves. This is important because sufficient leaf surface area is needed to capture sunlight and continue photosynthesis.
Other studies have shown that up to 20 percent of patients in various vegetative states can hear and respond on at least some level. But at least some of the responses seen could be dismissed as simple reflexes, or at best akin to someone in a dream state responding to stimuli.
Can someone recover after being on life support? Yes, but it often depends on the extent of the illness or injury. Some people do not recover from life support or die due to the underlying illness or complications. If someone recovers and no longer needs life support, they may still have long-term complications.
In the vegetative state there is a sleep wake cycle so presumably there is a least sometimes the neural process that we call dreaming, if and when we remember it. The patient is in vegetative state so they can't tell us whether or not they have dreams that they remember.
A state of complete unconsciousness with no eye-opening is called coma. A state of complete unconsciousness with some eye-opening and periods of wakefulness and sleep is called the vegetative state (VS). This refers to the “vegetative functions” of the brain (regulating body temperature, breathing, etc.)
“In a persistent vegetative state, your organs still work, and your fertility is still there,” she said. The risks in such cases would be poor fetal growth as well as all the usual risks of pregnancy found in healthy women, including diabetes and hypertension.