![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
"The case of the American woman Terri Schiavo is often cited as an example of PVS" It seems clunky to call her "the American woman Terri Schiavo", maybe it's just me though. Hondje 05:08, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"This is also suspect "Eye tracking is often the earliest symptom of recovery."" Agreed, from what I have read on other sites, limited eye tracking is a normal reflex reaction, which often gives the impression that the patient is somehow aware. I propose removing it, but I'd like to find a good medical source stating one way or the other before axing another users contribution.
This line is should not exist: "in many cases family members who visit the patient will detect evidence of awareness when doctors with limited patient contact will deny it."
This is also suspect "Eye tracking is often the earliest symptom of recovery."
Seems a bit one-sided toward recovery and may warrant a NPOV designator. After all, many PVS patients never recover.
Many PVS patients certainly never recover, and the text doesn't contest this, or even suggest (as I might) that some part of this may be due to termination of nutrition and hydration. However, the percentage of people diagnosed as being in PVS who eventually demonstrate consciousness varies in different studies between 6% and 76%, and in either case the point needs to be made that absolute certainty is impossible. Frankly, I think that anyone proposing NPOV should be obliged to cite some evidence for their belief. -Unsigned
From the page on Coma: One can be in a coma but still exhibit spontaneous respiration; one who is brain-dead by definition cannot do so. Just mentioning it because this page on vegitative states says that patients in a coma are unable to breathe on their own.
1) Terri Schiavo is not in PVS.
Not even close. Her father described her condition like this:
2) Some definitions of PVS say that the patient does NOT experience sleep-wake cycles:
So I changed the article to reflect that lack of concensus:
3) Many definitions of PVS mention that the patient is unresponsive to external stimuli:
So I added that fact:
Various court-appointed doctors have ruled that Terri Schiavo is in PVS. Q.v. [1]. This element needs a "dispute" note or, better yet, it should simply state the facts, which are that court-appointd doctors have held her to be in PVS, while her parents seem to dispute this. The above poster clearly has not read the definition of PVS, since he/she claims that the fact that Schiavo laughs, cries, etc., is evidence that she is not in PVS, when in fact these are part of the definition of PVS. Someone from wiki please help this page become NPOV. Tcassedy 03:52, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Terri Schiavo's autopsy found massive and irreversible damage to her brain that was completely consistent with PVS. 73.173.114.38 ( talk) 01:05, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
I don't have time to give much info right now, but as a graduating law student who has recently done a semester of Bioethics, I will agree that the current wiki PVS definition seems to be overly slanted towards exactly what folks like Schiavo's parents would have readers learn.
I would also note that I don't think the page even mentioned that some physicians refer to PVS as "permanent" rather than "persistent."
The definition also needs to note that many or most "recoveries" from PVS are probably just the result of misdiagnosis (patient not in PVS to start with) and usually occur within a shorter rather than longer period of time.
I will reasearch this more, but as one of many medical students who have been watching this case... she is not in PVS. She may have a much lower IQ than someone who was not the subject of questionable abuse, but not PVS. Her responces on the television (when you aren't listening to the reporter) are actually to what is going on around her. When someone called her pretty she laughed like a child. The reports of her saying " I want" with a really bad slur *when she was asked what she wanted*. Her responces are not random. If she were a veggie I think this debate would be different. Why her doctor called her this and isn't changing his mind.. why there wasn't more testing to differentiate this more.. why there was no reablilitation.. really weird case. It will be over soon though. By her urine out put.. she dies in the next few days from the lack of water. She may not improve from what damage has been done, but she is still functioning. It is not just wikipedia, but also the medical textbooks that have been refered to that support that the first doctor was incorrect. <Shrugs> can't examine, but can only say what it looks like from TV. She seems to be a misdiagnosis.
hmm
Individuals in persistent vegetative states are often referred to as vegetables, though the term may be considered derogatory.
I'm not sure if the anon is wrong. The word is used very often in the public discourse (although it seems it ususally does refer to coma), and it would be a shame to remove the reference altogether.
Incidentally, many Wikipedia articles contain interminable lists of slang terms. A brief glance at flatulence, vomiting and Ecstasy (drug) for good examples. I've often wondered if that is not over the top. JFW | T@lk 22:56, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I didn't know that; I wasn't judging the book by its cover. Every sensationalist newspaper uses the V-word occasionally in both PVS and coma. JFW | T@lk 00:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think I'll place my comment on the top to make spotting it easier.
Hondje, In correcting your big eraser, I did not revert, but, instead, reworded the passage to make it shorter and to the point. In the end, however, your claim that it was a POV (Point of View) is wrong. The edit does not say that Terri was --or was not --in PVS. It simply said that there was a shift in public opinion, and listed documentation to support that. These are the cold, hard facts, not opinions or points of views. Besides, the arguments that Terri WAS in PVS are listed as well, are they not? Lots of documentation is listed, so a little more clarification is not out of order, especially since there was no mention of an actual example, one you could see with your own two-eyes. -- GordonWattsDotCom_In_Florida 02:50, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
From Jennett, of Jennett and Plum who coined the term "Persistent Vegetative State"
The term obviously is offensive to some people, and understandably so, even though Jennett thought the root source was logical when he coined the term. There has been controversy over the word "niggardly". People have taken great offense at times, but the word is benign. Still, anyone can understand what the problem is. Maybe a solution here is to quote from Jennett's book to show even he recognizes there is a controversy. After all, PVS was his idea. Tropix 05:08, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
"Some authorities hold that PVS is, in fact, irreversible, and that the reportedly recovered patients were not suffering from true PVS.
Some authorities hold that PVS is irreversible and that the case reports of recoveries were misdiagnosed and not true cases of PVS.
Organization in brevity - looks cleaner to me, but it is trivial.
Regarding use of vegetable, I applaud the decision to block its use. Please guard against using emotionally laden terms, for they may form the foundation for ad populum and ad misericordiam fallacies."
I moved a paragraph from the Terri Schiavo page to the PVS article, as it was not about Schiavo at all, just about PVS. Please review if you can. Proto 13:34, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
This means that the US state of Florida has defined PVS as permanent and irreversible. This would seem to lead to some interesting conclusions:
Instead of the perplexing dichotomy above, how about describing it like this:
This separates the legal issues arising from the medical diagnosis, which is after all little more than the observation that the patient is in a coma and they can't wake her up.
A doctor may issue a prognosis, e.g., "I don't think she'll ever recover."
A jurisdiction (such as a US state) may then create a law which provides that patients diagnosed with incurable PVS (a) must be kept alive; or (b) may be kept alive if someone wants to pay for their care; or (c) shall not be kept alive, unless their legal guardian demands it, a living will exists, next of kin say so, etc.; or (d) shall always be euthanized.
Let's see if this perspective helps us sort out and describe the POVs expressed about the Terri Schiavo case. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 22:58, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
The article says:
This article does not present very much scientific evidence suggesting it is reversible. Either add to this article information on PVS' reversibility or take out this sentence about controversy.
This article says:
Who are they? what are their credentials? and what studies have been done? if these questions i've just asked cannot be answered, this sentence needs to be axed from the article. Wikipedia cannot have articles that say "some authorities hold" without saying who and how. Kingturtle 04:59, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
There is an interesting article here ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5008744.stm ) that perhaps can be mentioned in this entry.. 12:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Ran across another article, this one in The Guardian, which describes people who recover from PVS after taking zolpidem. However, I'm not nearly so sure of my paraphrasing skills/medical knowledge to try to add it to the article. Additionally, I can't find too many news articles at a first glance on Google News (the links it gives me are the Free Internet Press and the UK's Daily Mail), so I figure I'll leave the article-editing to people who have a better idea of what's going on than I do. magistrate 03:39, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Added a bit in the Zolpidem section, summarizing the results of the only other published (in PubMed) article on zolpidem in PVS. I'm not sure how to make the footnotes work, however, so if someone could fix that it woiuld be nice. I did add the article in the references, and placed a note in the text for where the footnote should go. Jes roo ( talk) 19:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
>"although it is widely accepted as the only known incurable illness in the world," from introduction. What about HIV, or hepatitis? I'm almost positive that there are a host of other "incurable illnesses." Any comments or citations? I'm planning to remove this in a few hours. Icewolf34 15:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
PVS is clearly not the only uncurable illness. ALS, MS, AIDS have no known cure. There are treatments to slow these diseases, however, there is no definitive cure for ALS, MS, AIDS and others.
I would like to see some citations to the statement "PVS is also known as cortical death"
If this is an up and coming term, I don't mind it being included in the article, but I think readers such as myself should be given citations so we can see who the advocates of this new terminology are.
In my opinion, "vegetative" is already terribly pejorative and undermines the perception of the patient as ... well, a patient...a human being worthy of being treated with dignity. I think the label "cortical death" is just another way of further advancing the presumption that the patient is "essentially dead" and can therefore be treated as dead. I suspect advocates of this term are looking to lay the ground work for organ harvesting of this new class of "brain dead" patients. So, while they are free to use this term, I'd like to see who the advocates of this terminology are.
If there are no cites to medical journals in favor of this terminology, it should be removed on the premise that it is just some wikipedia contributor's invention.
As an aside, as recent MRI research has shown that PVS patients do have cortical activity in response to verbal suggestions, the term "cortical death" is clearly not derived from evidence based medicine. It instead just codifies certain presumptions. See Owen AM, Coleman MR, Boly M, Davis MH, Laureys S, Pickard JD. Detecting awareness in the vegetative state. Science. 2006 Sep 8;313(5792):1402.
75.41.212.179 20:21, 9 November 2006 (UTC) Dave 11/9/06
The medical definition is worded as follows:
Any person with an illness that is not able to function properly without artificial help.
This poorly worded definition reads like PVS is a type of person.
Also, it seems to be far too broad. Would someone with a pacemaker, for example, qualify to be in a PVS? 206.53.197.24 ( talk) 23:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Yeah. all those death topics in the "other" row- genocide, suicide, human sacrifice. maybe I'm not viewing this whole thing properly, but it seems weird to connect them all with this page. anyone have any thoughts? Headlikeawhole ( talk) 03:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I found this interesting letter by John Paul II about the vegetative state. It would be interesting if we could quote it in an independent section about bioethics and religion. [3] ADM ( talk) 07:03, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Please let me know what you think about the edits. I explained how "persistent vegetative state" is used in the US (and I believe elsewhere), and then how the UK recommends a different system with "continuous" and "permanent", the latter of which has presents a legal presumption of medical "impossibility" in the UK court process. I also clarified what was previously called "legal/ethical definitions" (now legal/ethical issues) by qualifying that PVS is recognized as "death" in "no legal system", since readers may infer this means ending life support is impossible. There is not yet a statutory process for declaring the authoritative medical opinion that recovery of cognitive functions is impossible for PVS cases like there is for brain death. However, as we know the court system does grant petitions, after varying degrees of effort and controversy, to the same end.
If anyone seconds this opinion that the "contradictory definition" tag can be removed, I'll take it down. Also, if someone could fix my references to ensure they are formatted correctly, that'd be great since I'm new to Wikipedia editing and haven't a moment more to work on this for now. Thanks and I look forward to comments. Wilytilt ( talk) 18:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
This page links to residual, a disambiguation page. Whether it should say [[whatever|residual]] should be thought about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Anecdotal evidence suggests that long term co-administration of Lithium Carbonate may restore regions of the brain which are intermittently activated by zolpidem, and possibly other drugs. More research is needed, however the presumption is that Lithium is increasing neurotrophins, which in turn facilitate neurogenesis and neuroregeneration in these areas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.24.169.239 ( talk) 03:11, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
In the section "Notable PVS Patients", it says: The longest documented case of survival in a persistent vegetative state was Elaine Esposito, who remained PVS for thirty-seven years and 111 days from 1941 to 1978.
However, in the list (just above the statement) is a link to Aruna Shanbaug who is still in a vegetative state after 40 years.
Shouldn't the line about the "longest documented case" be changed? Or are these two different scenarios (I can't see how or why).
Kuncherto ( talk) 02:34, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
A new PET study was recently published; might update some info on that technique in the article. -- Beland ( talk) 01:46, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
I restored material regarding case studies of treatments that showed promise based on peer reviewed medical articles from around 2009---hardly "dated." This material was in the article for several years until it was wholesale removed, without discussion or consensus in Nov 2014. I believe it is important to keep this material in the article to give references that will help people researching this topic. If there is a desire to avoid these references as being presented as "treatment recommendations" -- which is a fair concern -- they could be put into a new section, called something like "Case studies of unverified treatments." Bottom line: there is no proven treatment that works for every case or even most cases. But the peer reviewed research that has been done deserves a place in the article. 97.91.202.83 ( talk) 15:39, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
"The case of the American woman Terri Schiavo is often cited as an example of PVS" It seems clunky to call her "the American woman Terri Schiavo", maybe it's just me though. Hondje 05:08, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"This is also suspect "Eye tracking is often the earliest symptom of recovery."" Agreed, from what I have read on other sites, limited eye tracking is a normal reflex reaction, which often gives the impression that the patient is somehow aware. I propose removing it, but I'd like to find a good medical source stating one way or the other before axing another users contribution.
This line is should not exist: "in many cases family members who visit the patient will detect evidence of awareness when doctors with limited patient contact will deny it."
This is also suspect "Eye tracking is often the earliest symptom of recovery."
Seems a bit one-sided toward recovery and may warrant a NPOV designator. After all, many PVS patients never recover.
Many PVS patients certainly never recover, and the text doesn't contest this, or even suggest (as I might) that some part of this may be due to termination of nutrition and hydration. However, the percentage of people diagnosed as being in PVS who eventually demonstrate consciousness varies in different studies between 6% and 76%, and in either case the point needs to be made that absolute certainty is impossible. Frankly, I think that anyone proposing NPOV should be obliged to cite some evidence for their belief. -Unsigned
From the page on Coma: One can be in a coma but still exhibit spontaneous respiration; one who is brain-dead by definition cannot do so. Just mentioning it because this page on vegitative states says that patients in a coma are unable to breathe on their own.
1) Terri Schiavo is not in PVS.
Not even close. Her father described her condition like this:
2) Some definitions of PVS say that the patient does NOT experience sleep-wake cycles:
So I changed the article to reflect that lack of concensus:
3) Many definitions of PVS mention that the patient is unresponsive to external stimuli:
So I added that fact:
Various court-appointed doctors have ruled that Terri Schiavo is in PVS. Q.v. [1]. This element needs a "dispute" note or, better yet, it should simply state the facts, which are that court-appointd doctors have held her to be in PVS, while her parents seem to dispute this. The above poster clearly has not read the definition of PVS, since he/she claims that the fact that Schiavo laughs, cries, etc., is evidence that she is not in PVS, when in fact these are part of the definition of PVS. Someone from wiki please help this page become NPOV. Tcassedy 03:52, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Terri Schiavo's autopsy found massive and irreversible damage to her brain that was completely consistent with PVS. 73.173.114.38 ( talk) 01:05, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
I don't have time to give much info right now, but as a graduating law student who has recently done a semester of Bioethics, I will agree that the current wiki PVS definition seems to be overly slanted towards exactly what folks like Schiavo's parents would have readers learn.
I would also note that I don't think the page even mentioned that some physicians refer to PVS as "permanent" rather than "persistent."
The definition also needs to note that many or most "recoveries" from PVS are probably just the result of misdiagnosis (patient not in PVS to start with) and usually occur within a shorter rather than longer period of time.
I will reasearch this more, but as one of many medical students who have been watching this case... she is not in PVS. She may have a much lower IQ than someone who was not the subject of questionable abuse, but not PVS. Her responces on the television (when you aren't listening to the reporter) are actually to what is going on around her. When someone called her pretty she laughed like a child. The reports of her saying " I want" with a really bad slur *when she was asked what she wanted*. Her responces are not random. If she were a veggie I think this debate would be different. Why her doctor called her this and isn't changing his mind.. why there wasn't more testing to differentiate this more.. why there was no reablilitation.. really weird case. It will be over soon though. By her urine out put.. she dies in the next few days from the lack of water. She may not improve from what damage has been done, but she is still functioning. It is not just wikipedia, but also the medical textbooks that have been refered to that support that the first doctor was incorrect. <Shrugs> can't examine, but can only say what it looks like from TV. She seems to be a misdiagnosis.
hmm
Individuals in persistent vegetative states are often referred to as vegetables, though the term may be considered derogatory.
I'm not sure if the anon is wrong. The word is used very often in the public discourse (although it seems it ususally does refer to coma), and it would be a shame to remove the reference altogether.
Incidentally, many Wikipedia articles contain interminable lists of slang terms. A brief glance at flatulence, vomiting and Ecstasy (drug) for good examples. I've often wondered if that is not over the top. JFW | T@lk 22:56, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I didn't know that; I wasn't judging the book by its cover. Every sensationalist newspaper uses the V-word occasionally in both PVS and coma. JFW | T@lk 00:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think I'll place my comment on the top to make spotting it easier.
Hondje, In correcting your big eraser, I did not revert, but, instead, reworded the passage to make it shorter and to the point. In the end, however, your claim that it was a POV (Point of View) is wrong. The edit does not say that Terri was --or was not --in PVS. It simply said that there was a shift in public opinion, and listed documentation to support that. These are the cold, hard facts, not opinions or points of views. Besides, the arguments that Terri WAS in PVS are listed as well, are they not? Lots of documentation is listed, so a little more clarification is not out of order, especially since there was no mention of an actual example, one you could see with your own two-eyes. -- GordonWattsDotCom_In_Florida 02:50, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
From Jennett, of Jennett and Plum who coined the term "Persistent Vegetative State"
The term obviously is offensive to some people, and understandably so, even though Jennett thought the root source was logical when he coined the term. There has been controversy over the word "niggardly". People have taken great offense at times, but the word is benign. Still, anyone can understand what the problem is. Maybe a solution here is to quote from Jennett's book to show even he recognizes there is a controversy. After all, PVS was his idea. Tropix 05:08, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
"Some authorities hold that PVS is, in fact, irreversible, and that the reportedly recovered patients were not suffering from true PVS.
Some authorities hold that PVS is irreversible and that the case reports of recoveries were misdiagnosed and not true cases of PVS.
Organization in brevity - looks cleaner to me, but it is trivial.
Regarding use of vegetable, I applaud the decision to block its use. Please guard against using emotionally laden terms, for they may form the foundation for ad populum and ad misericordiam fallacies."
I moved a paragraph from the Terri Schiavo page to the PVS article, as it was not about Schiavo at all, just about PVS. Please review if you can. Proto 13:34, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
This means that the US state of Florida has defined PVS as permanent and irreversible. This would seem to lead to some interesting conclusions:
Instead of the perplexing dichotomy above, how about describing it like this:
This separates the legal issues arising from the medical diagnosis, which is after all little more than the observation that the patient is in a coma and they can't wake her up.
A doctor may issue a prognosis, e.g., "I don't think she'll ever recover."
A jurisdiction (such as a US state) may then create a law which provides that patients diagnosed with incurable PVS (a) must be kept alive; or (b) may be kept alive if someone wants to pay for their care; or (c) shall not be kept alive, unless their legal guardian demands it, a living will exists, next of kin say so, etc.; or (d) shall always be euthanized.
Let's see if this perspective helps us sort out and describe the POVs expressed about the Terri Schiavo case. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 22:58, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
The article says:
This article does not present very much scientific evidence suggesting it is reversible. Either add to this article information on PVS' reversibility or take out this sentence about controversy.
This article says:
Who are they? what are their credentials? and what studies have been done? if these questions i've just asked cannot be answered, this sentence needs to be axed from the article. Wikipedia cannot have articles that say "some authorities hold" without saying who and how. Kingturtle 04:59, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
There is an interesting article here ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5008744.stm ) that perhaps can be mentioned in this entry.. 12:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Ran across another article, this one in The Guardian, which describes people who recover from PVS after taking zolpidem. However, I'm not nearly so sure of my paraphrasing skills/medical knowledge to try to add it to the article. Additionally, I can't find too many news articles at a first glance on Google News (the links it gives me are the Free Internet Press and the UK's Daily Mail), so I figure I'll leave the article-editing to people who have a better idea of what's going on than I do. magistrate 03:39, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Added a bit in the Zolpidem section, summarizing the results of the only other published (in PubMed) article on zolpidem in PVS. I'm not sure how to make the footnotes work, however, so if someone could fix that it woiuld be nice. I did add the article in the references, and placed a note in the text for where the footnote should go. Jes roo ( talk) 19:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
>"although it is widely accepted as the only known incurable illness in the world," from introduction. What about HIV, or hepatitis? I'm almost positive that there are a host of other "incurable illnesses." Any comments or citations? I'm planning to remove this in a few hours. Icewolf34 15:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
PVS is clearly not the only uncurable illness. ALS, MS, AIDS have no known cure. There are treatments to slow these diseases, however, there is no definitive cure for ALS, MS, AIDS and others.
I would like to see some citations to the statement "PVS is also known as cortical death"
If this is an up and coming term, I don't mind it being included in the article, but I think readers such as myself should be given citations so we can see who the advocates of this new terminology are.
In my opinion, "vegetative" is already terribly pejorative and undermines the perception of the patient as ... well, a patient...a human being worthy of being treated with dignity. I think the label "cortical death" is just another way of further advancing the presumption that the patient is "essentially dead" and can therefore be treated as dead. I suspect advocates of this term are looking to lay the ground work for organ harvesting of this new class of "brain dead" patients. So, while they are free to use this term, I'd like to see who the advocates of this terminology are.
If there are no cites to medical journals in favor of this terminology, it should be removed on the premise that it is just some wikipedia contributor's invention.
As an aside, as recent MRI research has shown that PVS patients do have cortical activity in response to verbal suggestions, the term "cortical death" is clearly not derived from evidence based medicine. It instead just codifies certain presumptions. See Owen AM, Coleman MR, Boly M, Davis MH, Laureys S, Pickard JD. Detecting awareness in the vegetative state. Science. 2006 Sep 8;313(5792):1402.
75.41.212.179 20:21, 9 November 2006 (UTC) Dave 11/9/06
The medical definition is worded as follows:
Any person with an illness that is not able to function properly without artificial help.
This poorly worded definition reads like PVS is a type of person.
Also, it seems to be far too broad. Would someone with a pacemaker, for example, qualify to be in a PVS? 206.53.197.24 ( talk) 23:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Yeah. all those death topics in the "other" row- genocide, suicide, human sacrifice. maybe I'm not viewing this whole thing properly, but it seems weird to connect them all with this page. anyone have any thoughts? Headlikeawhole ( talk) 03:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I found this interesting letter by John Paul II about the vegetative state. It would be interesting if we could quote it in an independent section about bioethics and religion. [3] ADM ( talk) 07:03, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Please let me know what you think about the edits. I explained how "persistent vegetative state" is used in the US (and I believe elsewhere), and then how the UK recommends a different system with "continuous" and "permanent", the latter of which has presents a legal presumption of medical "impossibility" in the UK court process. I also clarified what was previously called "legal/ethical definitions" (now legal/ethical issues) by qualifying that PVS is recognized as "death" in "no legal system", since readers may infer this means ending life support is impossible. There is not yet a statutory process for declaring the authoritative medical opinion that recovery of cognitive functions is impossible for PVS cases like there is for brain death. However, as we know the court system does grant petitions, after varying degrees of effort and controversy, to the same end.
If anyone seconds this opinion that the "contradictory definition" tag can be removed, I'll take it down. Also, if someone could fix my references to ensure they are formatted correctly, that'd be great since I'm new to Wikipedia editing and haven't a moment more to work on this for now. Thanks and I look forward to comments. Wilytilt ( talk) 18:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
This page links to residual, a disambiguation page. Whether it should say [[whatever|residual]] should be thought about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Anecdotal evidence suggests that long term co-administration of Lithium Carbonate may restore regions of the brain which are intermittently activated by zolpidem, and possibly other drugs. More research is needed, however the presumption is that Lithium is increasing neurotrophins, which in turn facilitate neurogenesis and neuroregeneration in these areas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.24.169.239 ( talk) 03:11, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
In the section "Notable PVS Patients", it says: The longest documented case of survival in a persistent vegetative state was Elaine Esposito, who remained PVS for thirty-seven years and 111 days from 1941 to 1978.
However, in the list (just above the statement) is a link to Aruna Shanbaug who is still in a vegetative state after 40 years.
Shouldn't the line about the "longest documented case" be changed? Or are these two different scenarios (I can't see how or why).
Kuncherto ( talk) 02:34, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
A new PET study was recently published; might update some info on that technique in the article. -- Beland ( talk) 01:46, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
I restored material regarding case studies of treatments that showed promise based on peer reviewed medical articles from around 2009---hardly "dated." This material was in the article for several years until it was wholesale removed, without discussion or consensus in Nov 2014. I believe it is important to keep this material in the article to give references that will help people researching this topic. If there is a desire to avoid these references as being presented as "treatment recommendations" -- which is a fair concern -- they could be put into a new section, called something like "Case studies of unverified treatments." Bottom line: there is no proven treatment that works for every case or even most cases. But the peer reviewed research that has been done deserves a place in the article. 97.91.202.83 ( talk) 15:39, 30 November 2016 (UTC)