Opinion: The term “vegetative state” writes off patients as “not even minimally conscious” when medicine is not in a position to make that diagnosis.

Imaging studies using a novel technique suggest that the remarkable recovery of speech and motor function seen in a patient who had been in a minimally conscious state for almost 20 years may be ...

For the first time, the number of institutionalized patients in minimally conscious state in the Netherlands has been established. It concerns 32 people, according to a study led by Radboud ...

Scientists are investigating new ways to bring patients back from a vegetative state—and raising uncomfortable questions ...

More fundamentally, though, doctors should not be expected to draw sharp lines between "minimally conscious" and "vegetative state" patients. We are not sure enough to make that call.

In 2003, 39-year-old Terry Wallis who had persisted in a minimally conscious state (MCS) for 19 years after a traumatic brain injury, recovered basic motor function and the power of speech. In a ...

Patients in a minimally conscious state show only intermittent and minimal signs of awareness of themselves or their environment.

We also evaluated responses on task-based fMRI and EEG in participants with an observable response to commands (i.e., participants with a behavioral diagnosis of minimally conscious state–plus ...

Patients who transitioned from unresponsive wakefulness syndrome or minimally conscious state minus (MCS–) to MCS+ or emergence from MCS (eMCS) were considered responsive.

"There were no patients who entered a permanently vegetative or minimally conscious state, and nearly all survivors in this study were functionally independent." ...