For children in a persistent vegetative state, the estimated annual cost of care at home is $129,000 (±$51,000) for the first year and $97,000 for subsequent years126.
Some people spontaneously recover from a vegetative state, but recovery is usually incomplete.
People can live in a vegetative state for years if they get appropriate care. This may mean having home health workers help care for them, or they may need to be in a nursing facility.
Life support is estimated to cost between $2000-$4000 a day but can climb up to $10,000 a day.
Annie Shapiro (1913–2003) was a Canadian apron shop owner who was in a coma for 29 years because of a massive stroke and suddenly awakened in 1992. Apart from the patients in the true story Awakenings, Shapiro was the longest a person has been in a coma like state and woken up.
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.
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 situations where a cure may not be possible, life support may cause suffering and pain, and this may lessen a person's quality of life.
Some patients die within minutes, while others breathe on their own for several minutes to several hours. Some patients will live for many days. This can cause distress for families if they expected death to come quickly. The priority of the health care providers is to keep your loved one comfortable and not suffering.
Between 92,000 and 142,500 people in England each year have an unmet need for palliative care. The estimated cost for a day of community care at the end of life is £145 compared with the cost of £425 for a specialist palliative in-patient bed day in hospital.
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.
Patients in a vegetative state do not respond to what is happening around them and exhibit no signs of conscious awareness. Now research has shown that the brains of patients in a vegetative state emotionally react to photographs of people they know personally as though they recognize them.
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.
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.
A vegetative state is similar to a coma but isn't the same. People in a vegetative state have recovered enough that they aren't in a coma, but their brain's abilities and activity are still very limited. The potential for recovery from a vegetative state varies widely.
The vegetative stage can last for weeks or even months. It ends when plants begin the transition to budding, whether because they have reached their mature size or because the conditions have triggered the start of reproduction.
Several years ago, the autopsy report of a totally brain-dead patient named TK who was kept on life support for nearly twenty years was published in the Journal of Child Neurology. He remains the individual kept on life support the longest after suffering total brain failure.
Someone on a ventilator may appear to be breathing, but cannot breathe on their own. While the heart usually stops within 72 hours, it could continue beating for “a week or so,” Varelas said.
Usually families and the medical team (doctors and nurses) make decisions together about life support. However, sometimes doctors make the final decision about life support. Sometimes families will decide. This depends on the type of decision, as well as on what families want.
Most often patients are sleepy but conscious while they are on the ventilator—think of when your alarm clock goes off but you aren't yet fully awake.
Typically, a coma does not last more than a few days or couple of weeks. In some rare cases, a person might stay in a coma for several weeks, months or even years. Depending on what caused the person to go into a coma, some patients are able to return to their normal lives after leaving the hospital.
Being on a ventilator is not usually painful but can be uncomfortable. With a breathing tube, you will not be able to eat or talk. With a trach tube, you may be able to talk with a special device and eat some types of food. With a face mask, you will be able to talk and eat only if recommended by your healthcare team.
The three essential findings in brain death are coma, absence of brain stem reflexes, and apnea. An evaluation for brain death should be considered in patients who have suffered a massive, irreversible brain injury of identifiable cause.
Severe brain injury is usually defined as being a condition where the patient has been in an unconscious state for 6 hours or more, or a post-traumatic amnesia of 24 hours or more. These patients are likely to be hospitalised and receive rehabilitation once the acute phase has passed.