PVS: The Search for Consciousness
This BBC programme aired on Radio 4 on 4th May looks at the work of Dr Adrian Owen and his fellow Cambridge researchers using functional MRI scans to try to detect brain activity in patients thought to be in a vegetative state or minimal-conscious state. These conditions are different from brain death, which involves the total destruction of all brain areas and the consequent collapse of heart-lung function. If a vegetative state lasts for more than three months (longer in certain forms of brain insult) there is thought to be progressively less chance that the patient will return to even minimal consciousness.
Up to 12,000 people under 40 in this country suffer traumatic brain injury every year and, according to Professor John Pickard, head of neurosurgery at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge, there are serious deficiencies in their care: "The tendency for patients to be left to languish on general medical, surgical and orthopaedic wards continues to their detriment."
