According to a recent report, up to 40 percent of coma patients in a ‘vegetative state’ may be misdiagnosed.
“The biggest, most tragic clinical myth about brain injury today is that PVS can be reliably diagnosed by bedside observation alone. It has in fact been known for at least a decade, ever since a key survey of brain-injured patients, that misdiagnosis of the condition runs at more than 40%, a statistic originally calculated by Professor Keith Andrews, former head of the Putney hospital, and confirmed by recent surveys in Europe and North America.”
So a coma can’t be diagnosed just by observation, and even with the best of Western medicine, error rates are high.
One of the possibilities is that the patient suffers from “locked in sydnrome,” where motor control has been selectively damaged, so that the patient is paralysed but still fully aware, conscious, and cognizant of his or her surroundings. From the NIH:
“Individuals with locked-in syndrome are conscious and can think and reason, but are unable to speak or move. The disorder leaves individuals completely mute and paralyzed. Communication may be possible with blinking eye movements”
So what do we make of the high rate of misdiagnosis? An implication of this finding is that decision to switch off life support for those who are not conscious should be made very carefully, and with the knowledge that there is a possibility that they could recover. It also calls into question the practice of harvesting organs from donors whose bodies are alive but who have been deemed to be ‘brain dead.’