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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
medicine
Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome: A new name for the vegetative state or apallic syndrome
BMC Medicine, Volume 8, Article 68, Year 2010
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Description
Background: Some patients awaken from coma (that is, open the eyes) but remain unresponsive (that is, only showing reflex movements without response to command). This syndrome has been coined vegetative state. We here present a new name for this challenging neurological condition: unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (abbreviated UWS).Discussion: Many clinicians feel uncomfortable when referring to patients as vegetative. Indeed, to most of the lay public and media vegetative state has a pejorative connotation and seems inappropriately to refer to these patients as being vegetable-like. Some political and religious groups have hence felt the need to emphasize these vulnerable patients' rights as human beings. Moreover, since its first description over 35 years ago, an increasing number of functional neuroimaging and cognitive evoked potential studies have shown that physicians should be cautious to make strong claims about awareness in some patients without behavioral responses to command. Given these concerns regarding the negative associations intrinsic to the term vegetative state as well as the diagnostic errors and their potential effect on the treatment and care for these patients (who sometimes never recover behavioral signs of consciousness but often recover to what was recently coined a minimally conscious state) we here propose to replace the name.Conclusion: Since after 35 years the medical community has been unsuccessful in changing the pejorative image associated with the words vegetative state, we think it would be better to change the term itself. We here offer physicians the possibility to refer to this condition as unresponsive wakefulness syndrome or UWS. As this neutral descriptive term indicates, it refers to patients showing a number of clinical signs (hence syndrome) of unresponsiveness (that is, without response to commands) in the presence of wakefulness (that is, eye opening). © 2010 Laureys et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
Authors & Co-Authors
Laureys, Steven
Belgium, Liege
Université de Liège
Celesia, Gastone G.
United States, Maywood
Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine
Cohadon, Francois
France, Bordeaux
University Hospital
Lavrijsen, Jan
Netherlands, Nijmegen
Radboud University Medical Center
León-Carrión, José
Spain, Sevilla
Universidad de Sevilla
Spain, Sevilla
Center for Brain Injury Rehabilitation Crecer
Sannita, Walter G.
Italy, Genoa
Università Degli Studi Di Genova
United States, Stony Brook
Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University
Sazbon, Leon
Israel, Tel Aviv-yafo
Tel Aviv University
Schmutzhard, Erich
Austria, Innsbruck
Landeskrankenhaus Innsbruck
von Wild, Klaus R.
Germany, Munster
University of Münster
Egypt, Cairo
Faculty of Medicine
Zeman, Adam
United Kingdom, Plymouth
Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth
Dolce, Giuliano
Italy, Crotone
S. Anna Institute
Statistics
Citations: 935
Authors: 11
Affiliations: 14
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1186/1741-7015-8-68
e-ISSN:
17417015
Research Areas
Health System And Policy
Study Design
Cross Sectional Study