Table 1. Case history and written instructions to participants of the first sub-study (part I), where we tested if the terms vegetative state and unresponsive wakefulness syndrome might influence attitudes towards treatment withdrawal or the perception of how frequent cognitive motor dissociation (CMD) is.
Participants were randomized into two groups: The first group was given the text as outlined here. The second group received the same text and the same instructions except that vegetative state was replaced by unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.
| Patient M. is a 25-year old woman with a brain injury after being hit by a car 2 years ago. She is now in a vegetative state. She resides in a nursing home. During daytime, the nurses place her in a chair. Her eyes are open, but she does neither look at the nursing staff nor at visitors, including family. She does not say anything, nor does she make any comprehensible sounds. When being touched or talked to, she does not react in any discernable way. She has a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, and she is incontinent for urine and stool. |
| Please indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with the following statements about the vegetative state: |
| •Following detailed discussions with the relatives of a patient in thevegetative state, it is morally acceptable to end the patient’s life by withdrawing treatment if there is no medical hope for recovery.a |
| •I would prefer treatment withdrawn if I were in avegetative statewithout hope for recovery.a |
| Research using modern neuroimaging techniques shows that some patients who fulfill the clinical criteria for the vegetative state nevertheless are conscious to such a degree that they can think or imagine things, e.g., thinking of playing tennis or imagining walking around in a house. Thus, although these patients look completely unaware when examined at the bedside, and are unable to communicate in any way, modern technologies reveal that some of them still show evidence of a rich mental life. |
| •For how large a percentage of patients with thevegetative statewould you believe this is true? Please state your best estimate (from 0% to 100%).b |
Notes.
a
A 7-point Likert scale was employed, ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”, to allow participants to express uncertainty.
b
Participants were asked to state their estimate using a visual analog scale from 0–100.