Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280521
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/7 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MADISON, WIS. LENGTH: Medium
Dr. Andres Kanner, a neurologist with the University of Wisconsin Hospital, said Tuesday it's a mystery why tranquilizers awakened the man.
"I don't know what it is," Kanner said. "It was just luck he had to have some dental work and it was just luck they administered the drugs."
The patient, identified only as a Wisconsin man in his mid-40s, had been in a vegetative state, not a coma: His eyes were open and he occasionally uttered words, but he could do nothing else, the doctor said in an interview Tuesday.
"His interaction with the environment was very limited. He rarely spoke one or two words," Kanner said.
The patient had been given Valium March 12 as a painkiller for routine dental work, Kanner said. After the tranquilizer was administered, the man fell asleep about five minutes, said Kanner, who was not present at the time.
"Then he woke up and started talking. He was able to answer questions, say his name, to feed himself and walk," Kanner said he was told.
Hours later, the man lapsed back into the vegetative state. He was given a second dose that brought him out of it for about 90 minutes. At that point he was able to recall parts of his life.
"I have to tell you he was a different man. He knew his name, the name of his family, where he used to work. He could add, subtract and perform complicated calculations," said Kanner, who witnessed the second reaction.
Since then, the man, who remains hospitalized, has received different, longer-lasting forms of benzodiazepines, a family of drugs that includes Valium, and barbiturates that allowed him to remain lucid 10 to 12 hours at a time, Kanner said. The drugs are administered intravenously.
Doctors can't tell why the drugs helped the man or what combination of drugs they can give him to take orally outside the hospital, he said.
One theory is that benzodiazepines, which inhibit certain functions of the nervous system, are blocking the effects of the vegetative state, Kanner said. But doctors for now are viewing the man's case as an isolated one, he said.
Kanner said the man suffers no medical problems other than his mysterious vegetative state. It developed about two years after he came out of a four-month coma brought on by a car accident 10 years ago.
The neurologist said that, as with most such patients, little was known about how to treat the man's condition and there was little hope for recovery before March 12.
by CNB