- A man who began speaking again after two years in a coma
says that he had heard and understood everything going on around him. Salvatore
Crisafulli, 38, has had great difficulty in speaking since recovering,
but, asked if he could remember the past two years, he replied "yes"
and wept. In true Italian style, his mother told reporters that his first
word had been "Mamma".
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- The recovery is being hailed as a miracle in his home
city of Catania in Sicily, and came to light on the day Italy's bioethics
committee was voting on whether to feed patients in a persistent vegetative
state.
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- The committee backed a motion, supported by rightwing
government parties, that ruled against suspending feeding. "To feed
an unconscious patient through a tube is not a medical act," said
the committee's president, Francesco D'Agostino. "It's like giving
a bottle to a newborn baby who can't be nursed by its mother." Earlier
this week a Vatican bishops' synod reiterated the Catholic view that everything
possible should be done to keep patients alive.
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- In October 2003, Mr Crisafulli's scooter collided with
a van, injuring his head. With remarkable determination, his brother, Pietro,
in January 2004 had him moved to Montecatini Terme in Tuscany where he
lives. For more than a year he looked after him unassisted. Last May, after
several failed attempts to get his brother admitted elsewhere, Pietro threatened
publicly to "pull the plug" unless the authorities agreed to
let his brother enter a hospital in Arezzo in Tuscany. It was there, Pietro
said, doctors first began to acknowledge Salvatore might be conscious despite
the apparent coma.
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- "My brother speaks and remembers. I don't expect
that he will be the way he was, but it is already a miracle," Pietro
was quoted as saying. "And to think that some doctors said that it
was all useless, and he would be dead in three or four months."
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- Salvatore first appeared to recover consciousness three
months ago, but began speaking only recently. Pietro called it "an
Italian Terri Schiavo case", though the two are strictly not comparable.
Ms Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, died in March after her feeding
tube was removed. However, she was in a persistent vegetative state, a
medical condition that differs from a coma. The Catholic church backed
demands for her to be fed despite the wishes of her husband. Pope John
Paul II died two days after she did, and the Vatican compared the US state
court to an "executioner" for ordering her tube removed.
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- Coma issues are of keen interest in Italy, not only because
of Catholicism, but also because of the high rate of road accidents, particularly
scooters; some 20,000 people enter some form of coma each year, and 1,500
are currently in a vegetative state.
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1585884,00.html
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