Doctors in Belgium are to re-examine dozens of coma patients following the case of Rom Houben. Mr Houben lay imprisoned in his own body for over two decades before doctors in the department of Neurology at Liege University hospital discovered through a PET scan that he was conscious and had an ”almost normal” level of brain activity.
According to the Guardian, Mr Houben was believed to be in a vegetative state following a car crash which occurred in 1983 and doctors told his family that he could hear and feel nothing. Now Mr Houben is able to communicate following physiotherapy on his finger, using a touch screen attached to his wheelchair. This does appear to be the limit of his recovery but his mother, Mrs Fina Houben, having already campaigned for 26 years to get her son’s consciousness recognised, refuses to concede that this is it, stating “We continue to search and search”.
Mr Houben’s case is exceptionally rare and there is apparently great difficulty in distinguishing using current technology between minimal levels of consciousness and a vegetative state. Indeed, it was only because of Mr Houben’s level of brain activity that his condition was discovered.
It would be difficult to attest that doctors were negligent in stating that he was in a vegetative state because they would have taken reasonable steps to identify the condition using the technology available to them at the time of the accident. The PET scan is a relatively new technological breakthrough, but if Mr Houben’s case highlights that there may be other conscious patients who are thought to be in a vegetative state then this can only be a good thing.
Further advancement of this technology should also lead to fewer such misdiagnosis in future and enable individuals to get appropriate treatment at an earlier stage.
