Recovery from Coma Is a Reality for Many Patients.(example of Brian Cressler)(Brief Article)

The diagnosis of coma has become one of the biggest battlegrounds in medical care. While some doctors insist that comatose patients will never recover and should be starved or dehydrated to death, examples of people who have emerged from comas to live full and productive lives can be found across the country.

Such diagnoses are fraught with subjective interpretations and can be used as justification to withhold treatment and care from helpless patients.

"Coma" is actually a very broad term that indicates the patient is unable to respond to his or her environment. Dr. Mihai Dimancescu, chairman of the board of the Coma Recovery Association, writes on the group's web site that coma should be defined as "a state of unresponsiveness from which an individual has not yet been aroused." Many patients emerge from comas, even after months in the condition.

Dr. Dimancescu explains that the characteristics of coma vary from patient to patient, with some people able to hear what is going on around them even if they cannot interact with anyone. "While a person described as being in a coma may be totally unaware of his or her state or environment," he writes, "others may have some or even full awareness, contrary to our own perception of their condition." Medical science has not yet advanced enough to be able to determine exactly why most comas occur or which patients will survive and which will not.

He tells of 23-year-old Judy, who was in a coma for three months. A professor, making daily rounds with his medical students, would pass by Judy's bed every day, saying, "Judy is in a coma. She'll never wake up." According to Dr. Dimancescu, Judy came out of her coma and told him she "always remembered that darn professor refusing to stop by her bed, saying that she would not wake up!"

Patients like Judy, dismissed by medical caregivers as all but dead, can and do wake up. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an extensive profile of Brian Cressler, who spent 18 months in a coma caused by a car accident a few weeks after his high school graduation in June 1991.

Cressler's parents, Don and Fran, took him home from St. Louis University Hospital in January 1992. Brian couldn't move or talk, his eyes locked in a blank stare. "It was a look that went right through you," said Fran Cressler, according to the Post-Dispatch.