How accurate is a PVS diagnosis?
"How accurate is a PVS diagnosis?"
You would probably get a more accurate diagnosis by calling the "pyshic hot line."
Let's put it this way: If you were in a PVS, you wouldn't care whether or not someone killed you. If you weren't, you would.
That depends on what efforts are taken to ensure it's accuracy. If you diagnose someone as PVS, predicting they'll never recover, and then shoot in the head with a twelve gauge, there's a pretty strong likelihood your prediction will be correct. In you diagnose someone as PVS without attempting therapy, but then therapy is given, there's a much stronger likelihood the prediction will be wrong.
PVS is a difficult diagnosis because someone who's cognitive 1% of the time and seemingly-vegetative 99% of the time is not PVS. The notion that a single 45-minute exam is sufficient to judge someone PVS is absurd, especially if there's any possibility the subject was sedated by someone who wanted a PVS diagnosis.
In fact, an absolutely solid PVS diagnosis is fundamentally impossible because it would mean that there exists no type of stimulus that would produce any type of cognitive response. Given the wide range of possible stimuli and responses, there is no plausible way to test them all. So what a PVS diagnosis usually means is that a doctor has given up looking.