An autopsy on Terri Schiavo supports her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, the medical examiner's office said today.
The examination found that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.
Autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman were made public today, more than two months after her death on March 31st ended a right-to-die battle between her husband and parents.
Dr. Jon R. Thogmartin confirmed Mrs Schiavo died from dehydration. She did not appear to have suffered a heart attack, he said, and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death.
He said that after her feeding tube was removed, she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth, as her parents requested. "Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Dr Thogmartin told reporters.
He also said she was blind, because the "vision centres of her brain were dead," and that her brain was about half of its expected size when she died 13 days after the feeding tube's removal. "The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain," he said. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurones."
However, what caused the American woman to collapse 15 years earlier remains a mystery. The autopsy and post-mortem investigation found no proof that she had an eating disorder, as was suspected at the time.
Michael Schiavo said his wife never would have wanted to be kept alive in what court-appointed doctors concluded was a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. Her family, however, doubted she had any such wishes and disputed that she was in a vegetative state.
The medical examiner's conclusions countered a videotape released by the Schindlers of Mrs Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed her appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile, moaning and laughing. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly coloured balloon. They believed her condition could improve with therapy. However, doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of thought or consciousness.