Article Text
Editorial
Patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness: more than a clinical challenge
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
-
Competing interests None.
-
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed. This paper was reviewed by Adam Zeman, Exeter, UK.
-
Relevant interests I was a co-chair on the recent Royal College of Physicians Working party that drew up the Third Edition of Guidelines. I have undertaken and continue to undertake medico-legal assessments and reports on people with prolonged disorders of consciousness, including reports on patients whose cases are going to court for permission to withdraw Clinically Assisted Nutrition and Hydration. My NHS Trust admits such patients for assessment and management.
Linked Articles
- Editors' choice
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- A matter of life and death: controversy at the interface between clinical and legal decision-making in prolonged disorders of consciousness
- Withdrawing clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH) in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness: is there still a role for the courts?
- Back to the bedside? Making clinical decisions in patients with prolonged unconsciousness
- Why I wrote my advance decision to refuse life-prolonging treatment: and why the law on sanctity of life remains problematic
- It is never lawful or ethical to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness
- Serial measurement of Wessex Head Injury Matrix in the diagnosis of patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states: a cohort analysis
- Causes and consequences of delays in treatment-withdrawal from PVS patients: a case study of Cumbria NHS Clinical Commissioning Group v Miss S and Ors [2016] EWCOP 32
- Can ‘Best Interests’ derail the trolley? Examining withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration in patients in the permanent vegetative state
- Withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration decisions in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness: best interests of the patients and advance directives are the keys
- Court applications for withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration from patients in a permanent vegetative state: family experiences