Study: Some "vegetative" patients may not be as vegetative as thought

The new report, posted online by The New England Journal of Medicine, does not suggest that most apparently unresponsive patients can communicate or are likely to recover. The hidden ability displayed by the young accident victim is rare, the study suggested.

Nor does the finding apply to victims of severe oxygen depletion, like Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who became unresponsive after her heart stopped and was taken off life support in 2005 during an explosive controversy over patients’ rights…

Still, the experts agreed that the new study exposed the limits of the current bedside test for diagnosing mental state: checking whether patients’ eyes can track objects, and carefully looking for any signs — eye blinks, finger twitches — in response to questions or commands.