EFE Scott Routley, a Canadian of 39 years who suffered a car accident 12 years ago. A BBC television programme has followed its evolution. It’s the first patient with serious brain damage that has been able to respond clinically relevant to the expert team. We believe you know who and where they are, explained the team leader. A man who remained in a vegetative state for more than one decade has failed to communicate first with doctors through a scanner to affirm that do not feel pain, according to the public broadcaster BBC. Scott Routley, a Canadian of 39 years suffered a car accident 12 years ago, is one of the United Kingdom and Canada patients with severe brain damage whose evolution has followed the BBC Panorama programme. It is the first case in which a patient who suffers from severe brain damage and lacks the ability to communicate has been able to give answers clinically relevant to the team of experts while you they performed a scanner of your brain activity with the technique known as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging of images). To date, none of the physical evaluations to which the doctors underwent this patient had shown signs of consciousness or ability to communicate.
However, British neuroscientist Adrian Owen, responsible for the team of experts from the Institute of the brain and the mind of the University of Western Ontario (Canada), considered that Routley was not in a vegetative state. Scott has been able to demonstrate that you have a conscious mind and what you think. You scanned several times and the pattern of their brain activity shows that he clearly chooses to answer our questions. We believe you know who and where you are, this expert told the BBC. For his part, Professor Bryan Young, of the University Hospital of London which was Routley neurologist for a decade, he noted that scanners practiced this patient outcomes give an upset to all ratings of behavior that had been done over the years. I was impressed and I was surprised that Routley could show such cognitive responses, said Young, since the patient presents the clinical picture of the typical patient in a vegetative state and did not show movements spontaneous that seem significant.