Pioneering treatment helps brain injury victim

After a groundbreaking new brain tissue stimulation treatment involving electrodes, a man left in a near vegetative state for six years after a brain injury is now making a dramatic recovery.

The 38-year-old, who can not be named, can talk expressively, recognise people and feed himself, after being left in a minimally conscious state (MCS) when his skull was crushed in an assault in 1999, according to Nature publication.Before the treatment, the man was confined to a bed in a care home, being neither able to swallow nor speak, although scans showed that parts of his brain were still preserved and active, a remarkable fact that recent research has revealed is possible.

When it was first proposed, doctors told the man's parents that the deep brain stimulation would probably not end successfully, and they hasten to warn families of other brain trauma patients that it often does not.But the theory that led to the attempt to treat the patient was that people in MCS do not recover because large-scale networks in the brain that remain active are not being stimulated.So doctors implanted electrodes in the part of the brain called the thalamus and began to stimulate them progressively more each day. The first response they got was when the man turned his head on hearing someone speak, then as time went on, he regained the ability to eat and began to talk a little.

Researchers said their findings showed that such treatment could "promote significant late functional recovery from severe traumatic brain injury". They concluded: "Our observations, years after the injury occurred, challenge the existing practice of early treatment discontinuation for patients with only inconsistent interactive behaviours and motivate further research to develop therapeutic interventions."Now the team responsible for the study are calling for more research to be done.