Positivity: The ‘medical miracle’ that brought near-vegetative brain back to life

This is about work being done at the Cleveland Clinic, via the UK Times Online:

August 2, 2007

The mother of a man who was left in a near-vegetative state by a serious assault spoke yesterday of her joy at the “medical miracle” that has allowed him to speak and eat again — and which could benefit tens of thousands of people in a similar condition.

The severely brain-injured patient, who is now 38, was unable to communicate, swallow or make co-ordinated movements for six years, before doctors revived him from this mini-mally conscious state (MCS) with a revolutionary therapy.

Since his skull was implanted with electrodes to stimulate a deep-lying and undamaged part of his brain, he has improved so dramatically that he can now feed himself, brush his hair and recognise and talk to his parents and doctors.

“My son can now eat, sleep, watch a movie without falling asleep, he can drink from a cup, he can express pain, he can cry, and he can laugh,” his mother said.

“He can say, ‘I love you, Mommy’. God bless those wonderful doctors who believed in my son, and gave their time and effort to help my son.”

One of his most impressive achievements has been to say from memory the first 16 words of the Pledge of Allegiance, which is recited daily by American schoolchildren.

The transformation achieved by the deep brain stimulation (DBS) technique, which is already used to treat Parkinson’s disease and some mental illnesses, has raised hopes that it could offer a way back to consciousness for many people with similarly serious brain damage. While there are few reliable figures for the number of MCS patients around the world, doctors estimate that the total runs to hundreds of thousands. The research team, which has published its results in the journal Nature, will now start the first formal clinical trial on 12 American patients.

“We hope that the first use of DBS to treat patients in an MCS marks the beginning of a significant period of innovation in our approach to trau-matic brain injury,” said Ali Rezai, Professor of Neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who implanted the electrodes.

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