Man diagnosed in coma for 23 years, was awake all along

Rom Houben, now 46, had been trapped in his body for 23 years.

Doctors assumed that Houben was in a vegetative state after he was discovered unconscious after a car crash in 1983, and thought that he could hear and feel nothing. However, Steven Laureys, a neurologist, decided to take another look at Houben and found him, to their surprise, to be fully conscious and aware.

Houben’s body had been completely paralyzed – he couldn’t move any part of his body. He had no way to communicate or express himself, but his brain was functioning completely and normally. He could hear and see his doctors come in, even listen to their conversations.

“Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it,” said Houben through a keyboard that he now uses with one finger. “I had dreamed myself away.”

Laureys, the head of the Coma Science Group and the Department of Neurology in Liege University hospital, estimates that misdiagnosed comas are occurring more frequently than one would expect. His own work is testament – of 44 coma patients that he has studied himself, he found that 18 of them respond to communication.

Laureys suggests that patients who are to be diagnosed as being in non-reversible comas should be tested 10 times before being finalized. “Once someone is labelled as being without consciousness, it is very hard to get rid of that,” concluded Laureys.