Persistent vegetative state is a long term state of unconsciousness due to damage to the brain. Sufferers are physically and emotionally unresponsive to external stimuli, but need no help with essential functions like respiration and heart rate.
Coma may result from extensive brain damage as may happen in head injuries or after a heart attack when the brain was starved of oxygen for too long. The most common cause is a serious head injury. Persistent vegetative state may also result from disease of the brain, including viral encephalitis, or by oxygen deprivation of the brain as an outcome of near drowning.
In persistent vegetative state, the parts of the brain that control the higher mental functions like idea are damaged, leaving the regions that command the critical functions like respiration and heart rate whole. So although someone is physically and emotionally unresponsive to sound, light and other stimuli, they are able to breathe without help. They may also transfer the head or limbs.
Individuals in a persistent vegetative state seem to have regular sleep routines, with their eyes shutting and opening as if sleeping and awakening. Nevertheless, they don’t seem to sense physical sensations like pain or experience mental misery. Since regions of the brain that control respiration and other functions are complete, a man in a persistent vegetative state can stay living for months or even years provided proper medical treatment is given.
What Might Be Done?
The analysis of persistent vegetative state is made if a man who’s unconscious neglects to react to stimulus or to convey but essential functions like respiration are kept. It’s normally concurred the head of the individual isn’t working actively.
There’s no successful treatment for an individual who’s in a persistent vegetative state. Nevertheless, general supportive measures and nursing care will ensure that an affected individual is kept as comfortable as possible. A man in a persistent vegetative state can live for several years but healing is improbable.
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