Tuesday, September 23, 2008

New Diagnostic Techniques to Reduce Forty Percent PVS Misdiagnosis

Wesley Smith has written a blog about a report in the Times of London (England) that explained how a new diagnostic technique may reduce the level of misdiagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) by 40 percent.

For those who thought that Terri Schiavo was in a PVS state, the question you should ask is: Are You Sure?

I remember a presentation that I heard in March 2004 at the Congress on: Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State that was organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life. The presentation was by the author of a study that concluded that more than 40 percent of people diagnosed as PVS were misdiagnosed.

The presentation effected me because the author of the study explained that in the UK someone can be dehydrated to death if they are diagnosed as PVS. The concern was that the person be properly diagnosed to avoid dehydrating people that could be rehabilitated.

Link to the Blog
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2008/09/new-diagnostic-techniques-to-reduce.html

Link to the original article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk:80/tol/life_and_style/health/article3004892.ece

Link to the Andrews study on misdiagnosis of PVS:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7048/13

1 comment:

Ironsides said...

Hello Alex,

There are Alzcheimers patients here at times, and these patients are taken care of until they die naturally.

Concerning PVS, there was a younger guy here for over ten years before he died of a heart-attack. He was from Vietnam, and initially he suffered a stroke he never recovered from.

At one point in 2001 we were in the same room. He only understood French, but nurses and a PA explained that he was in a coma after his stroke.

His wife and parents visited him weekly for all the years he was alive, and last year I asked about him, but he had died from a heart-attack.

I really think comatose or PVS patients have every right to live as long as they can, and I couldn't care less about "quality of life".

Concerning these growing number of euthanasia-pushers in the medical field, I think there needs to be a major push for pro-life values people to populate the medical colleges and the political parties.

Younger people are being poisoned in school, to grow up as pro-euthanasia thinkers.--I experience it with McGill students who work here as volunteers. So, I think North America needs to produce schoolteachers who are pro-life values educators to turn this poison around.

If Canadians and Americans don't populate the jobs and positions needed to lower the number of euthanasia-pushers, they will soon conquer the Supreme Court. In the U.S. they have pretty much got it, unless they increase the pro-life population within the judiciary.