Take a good look at that scan. Her entire brain is missing. That white stuff you see on the outer edges is connective tissue,sort of like cartlage, the material that forms the various chambers where brain material is supposed to be.You can plainly see that these various chambers are empty.
You can see at the very front there looks to be some material there, as small amount on the right and left shperes. It too is markedly different from healthy looking tissue, is front lobe material, and isn't connected to anything. it's probably just scar tissue now. or dead material that is slowly dissolving.
Important is the the entire cerebral cortex is missing, because even if there were some small part of the brain intact and working, it has no pathway, and no processing region in which to connect to.
She exists only on brainstem activity, that is all. She is not aware. That's what the doctors mean when they say she is not concious.
As far as flat eeg goes, he's correct as well. People are confuzing ekg's for eegs. Also, when this other doc made his statement, he had not seen Terri's scans. To make a statement saying she has 75% of her brain left is a joke. unlike most people, I do know how to read xrays and scans.
I have a certificate in radiology and certificates for operation of battlefield equipment.
Facts, schmacts.
They cut brains in half and take out lobes and people go on to live healthy and happy lives. T There was an article following people with extensive damage to their brain, just like Terri. One was in college and now has an IQ of 126.
There's a lot that doctors don't know about the brain.
FYI to above post.
The EEG report didn't say it was flat overall - if it had been, she'd be brain dead. It said there was no cerebral activity. (flat in terms of thoughts)
Bambakadis said he disagreed with the radiologists terminology, preferred severely abnormal, but typical of PVS. Even when they inflicted pain or opened her eyes.
Most of the Drs agreed with you that the stuff shown on the scans were just gliotic tissue, or if if there were living neurons, they were too isolated to communicate.
I don't like putting too much emphasis on the scans tho - to me, the clinical is most important.
BTW - all this talk about her not having a PET scan - it was her parents' radiologist who preferred SPECT to PET for her case. Made sense to me. Wish they had been able to do an fMRI tho.