A High Court judge has ruled that doctors may withdraw life support from a 66-year-old man suffering from what is now called a prolonged disorder of consciousness.
Mr Justice Hayden granted declarations that continued ventilation together with clinically assisted nutrition and hydration were no longer in the patient’s interests.
After a heart attack that would have probably been fatal if he had not already been in hospital, the patient was found to have a significant hypoxic ischemic brain injury. Doctors said he did not demonstrate any features of awareness or volitional purposeful activity.
Hayden said:
This condition has been, historically, categorised as a “persistent vegetative state”. It is a term which has been used in the case papers and in evidence. It excites a great deal of distress in families of patients in this condition. I watched as this family recoiled from the term. It has a dehumanising connotation which is, in my view understandably, perceived as offensive to the dignity of the patient…
These days, the consensus amongst the medical profession is that prolonged disorder of consciousness is a continuum which it is unnecessary artificially to demarcate by labels.
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