Caring for patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) such as unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (vegetative state) or minimally conscious state and related conditions such as locked-in syndrome currently represent a financial, medical and ethical conundrum. Although severe brain injuries represent a fraction of the population with brain injury, their cost is enormous (around $4 billion in direct medical costs per year), mostly due to the long-term care they need. The impressive number of studies performed on disorders of consciousness in the last decade has allowed refining diagnosis criteria, acquiring a better understanding of prognosis, and developing new tools to care and treat this challenging population. In this context, recently published milestone papers have provided new guidelines to clinicians for managing patients with DOC. This should lead to a shift in mentality and in the way we care for these patients.
This book brings together researchers and clinicians to write about recent and future changes that will altogether improve the outcome of patients with DOC.