US:Doctors in the US have transformed the life of a minimally conscious patient by implanting electrodes deep into his brain.
The 38-year-old can eat, drink and communicate with his family for the first time since 1999 when a savage assault left him with severe brain injury.
This first successful use of "deep brain stimulation" or DBS to treat the effects of serious brain damage is published today in the journal Nature. It will offer thousands of families the hope that they may be able to communicate again with loved ones who have lived for many years as little more than human vegetables.
The operation was carried out at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey.
DBS is used to treat Parkinson's and other neurological disorders, but had not been tried on a patient with severe head injury.
The patient has not been identified but his unnamed mother spoke at a telephone press briefing yesterday: "The doctor told us in 1999: if your son pulls through, he will be a vegetable for the rest of his life.
"If it were not for DBS surgery and rehabilitation, we would be no further along than we were in 1999. Now, my son can eat, express himself and let us know if he is in pain. He enjoys a quality of life we never thought possible," she said.
"He can say 'I love you mummy'. I still cry every time I see my son - but now with tears of joy."
Joseph Giacino, of the JFK Johnson Institute, said: "Prior to the use of DBS, the patient's communication ability was inconsistent, including only slight eye or finger movements.
"Now, he regularly uses words and gestures and responds to questions quickly. In addition, he now chews and swallows his food and no longer requires a feeding tube."
The operation marked the beginning of a planned clinical trial of DBS to treat 12 minimally conscious patients.
"Without further study, we have no means of knowing for sure that the functional improvements we have observed will be seen in other subjects, yet we expect that we will find other patients who will respond," said Nicholas Schiff, of Cornell.
"We can say that this patient's recovery of oral feeding and communication abilities was strongly linked to the DBS."
Surgeons worked for 10 hours, using image-guided navigation, to insert tiny electrodes into the patient's central thalamus, a brain region that adjusts neural activity in response to cognitive demands.
The electrodes are connected to programmable pacemaker batteries in the chest, which stimulate the brain for 12 hours a day. - (Financial Times service)