BACKGROUND Bedside clinical examinations can have high rates of misdiagnosis of unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (vegetative state) or minimally conscious state. The diagnostic and prognostic usefulness of neuroimaging-based approaches has not been established in a clinical setting. We did a validation study of two neuroimaging-based diagnostic methods: PET imaging and functional MRI (fMRI). ...

In The Lancet, Damian Cruse and colleagues' study 1 examines 16 patients in the vegetative state. This disorder is defi ned as wakefulness without conscious awareness of self and environment. The investigators showed that three (19%) of the 16 patients could generate EEG responses to two commands involving motor imagery, although the patients were otherwise behaviourally unresponsive. But how c...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW We discuss the problems of evidence-based neurorehabilitation in disorders of consciousness, and recent functional neuroimaging data obtained in the vegetative state and minimally conscious state. RECENT FINDINGS Published data are insufficient to make recommendations for or against any of the neurorehabilitative treatments in vegetative state and minimally conscious state p...

OBJECTIVE To explore the long-term outcome of young patients with disorders of consciousness who had received intensive neurorehabilitation. METHODS A cross-sectional cohort study, in which the survival, level of consciousness, functional independence, mobility, communication and living situation were determined by means of a structured questionnaire. The cohort consisted of 44 children and y...

D espite the wide application of functional neuroimaging techniques to the study of neurological disorders, few reports have examined patterns of brain activity following severe injuries. In this review, we discuss recent functional brain imaging studies of patients in the vegetative state (VS) and pilot studies of patients meeting diagnostic criteria for the newly formulated minimally consciou...