Persistent Vegetative State

A persistent vegetative state is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. It is a diagnosis of some uncertainty in that it deals with a syndrome. After four weeks in a vegetative state (VS), the patient is classified as in a persistent vegetative state. This diagnosis is classified as a permanent vegetative state (PVS) after approximately one year of being in a vegetative state.

Read more about Persistent Vegetative State:  History, Classification, Signs and Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, Recovery, Possible Treatment and Cures, Epidemiology, Ethics and Policy, Notable PVS Patients

Famous quotes containing the words vegetative state, persistent, vegetative and/or state:

    Virtuous people are simply those who have ... not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.
    Isadora Duncan (1878–1927)

    Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    Virtuous people are simply those who have ... not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.
    Isadora Duncan (1878–1927)

    The real stumbling-block of totalitarian rĂ©gimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men’s inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)