RESEARCH ARTICLE
Long-Term (Six Years) Clinical Outcome Discrimination of Patients in the Vegetative State Could be Achieved Based on the Operational Architectonics EEG Analysis: A Pilot Feasibility Study
Andrew A. Fingelkurtsa, *, Alexander A. Fingelkurtsa, Sergio Bagnatob, c, Cristina Boccagnib, c, Giuseppe Galardib, c
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2016Volume: 10
Issue: Suppl-1, M6
First Page: 69
Last Page: 79
Publisher ID: TONIJ-10-69
DOI: 10.2174/1874440001610010069
Article History:
Received Date: 12/2/2016Revision Received Date: 6/4/2016
Acceptance Date: 11/4/2016
Electronic publication date: 13/05/2016
Collection year: 2016

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings are increasingly used to evaluate patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) or assess their prognosis outcome in the short-term perspective. However, there is a lack of information concerning the effectiveness of EEG in classifying long-term (many years) outcome in chronic DOC patients. Here we tested whether EEG operational architectonics parameters (geared towards consciousness phenomenon detection rather than neurophysiological processes) could be useful for distinguishing a very long-term (6 years) clinical outcome of DOC patients whose EEGs were registered within 3 months post-injury. The obtained results suggest that EEG recorded at third month after sustaining brain damage, may contain useful information on the long-term outcome of patients in vegetative state: it could discriminate patients who remain in a persistent vegetative state from patients who reach a minimally conscious state or even recover a full consciousness in a long-term perspective (6 years) post-injury. These findings, if confirmed in further studies, may be pivotal for long-term planning of clinical care, rehabilitative programs, medical-legal decisions concerning the patients, and policy makers.