Fully Conscious, but in ‘Coma’ for 23 years: The Curious Case of Rom Houben

Rom Houben was 20 when he was involved in a gruesome car crash following which he was presumed brain dead by doctors. Today he is 46 and has dealt with the misfortune of spending more than half his life in ‘coma’. Now that the doctors have realised that he was fully conscious all through, the man himself hails this discovery as his “second birth”.

Rom’s injuries following the ill-fated crash in 1983 were so grave and his condition so serious that he was written off as having been lapsed into an “extinct” state. Doctors presumed he was reduced to the state of a vegetable, devoid of his senses, whereas the fact of the matter is that he was very much aware of his surroundings - to the extent that he was able to listen in on his doctors gradually giving up hope on him.

Thanks to the relentless efforts of coma specialists working on Rom at the Liège University Hospital, the Belgian man can now communicate with the aid of an adapted keyboard. The realisation that there was life left in Rom had first dawned on the specialists three years ago and having tracked his condition closely and after researching further on the matter they have now brought the details of the case in the open.

Employing brain scanning techniques that were not available when the accident took place, neurologist Dr Steven Laureys soon discovered that Mr Houben’s cerebral cortex was indeed active. The patient’s ability to indicate yes/no with little nudges to a computer device using his foot lead to the path-breaking discovery. Houben’s condition has since come to be known as “locked-in syndrome,” a condition in which patients, having lapsed into a state of acute paralysis cease the ability to demonstrate their consciousness.

Rom is still under constant care in a nursing home near Brussels but with his finger on a touch screen keyboard is able communicate his feelings. Doctors say his cognitive brain activity level is now near normal. Asked to state his feelings immediately following the dreadful accident, Rom articulates thus: “Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.”

Bodily paralysed but mentally determined to fight back, Ron was all along hopeful of a recovery. “All that time I just literally dreamt of a better life,” reminisces the man who was once an avid wind-surfer and a martial arts enthusiast. His mother too had never given up on her son and if not for her dogged determination to see her son in normal condition, Dr Laureys might not have probably attempted his ‘breakthrough’ tests on the patient. “I always knew our son was still there,” says the mother with a confidence which one can only associate with a mother.

Houben’s case has opened up a whole new way of treating coma patients with the realisation now dawning that hundreds of such patients could well be conscious but locked in a state of paralysis — unable to show their pain as discernible to a naked eye. But with Dr Laureys’ brain scanning techniques, they can now look forward to not only correct diagnosis but treatment and recovery as well.

In fact, Dr Laureys’ pioneering study has just concluded that 41 % of those believed as cases of ‘extinct’ patients have gone on to display signs of consciousness. The most important outcome of the study then could well be that doctors would now think twice before recommending switching off those life support machines from patients hitherto considered as end-of-life cases.

- myVox