Posted on 06/19/2005 6:04:50 PM PDT by wagglebee
Dr. William Hammesfahr, nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work in Medicine, has been recognized by agents for Medicare, the federal government, and others for new approaches to helping the brain injured.
Dr. Hammesfahr has been identified in helping patients with chronic brain injuries from many causes actually leave long term disability, and return to work.
Dr. Hammesfahr was identified the first physician to restore deficits caused by stroke.
Dr. Hammesfahr has released the following statement in response to the autopsy report on Terri Schindler Schiavo:
We have seen a lot on the autopsy of Terri Schindler Schiavo in recent days, that I feel needs to be addressed. To ignore these comments will allow future 'Terri Schiavo's' to die needlessly after the wishes of clinicians and family are ignored.
Considering that there were so many physicians and therapists who were willing to step forward to treat Terri Schiavo, from university based practitioners to those in private practice, it clearly shows that the mainstream medical community across the board, those involved in treating patients, knew that they could help Terri.
The record must be set straight. As we noted in the press, there was no heart attack, or evident reason for this to have happened (and certainly not of Terri's making).
Unlike the constant drumbeat from the husband, his attorneys, and his doctors, the brain tissue was not dissolved, with a head of just spinal fluid. In fact, large areas were "relatively preserved."
The purpose of the therapies offered by so many, from major universities, brain injury centers, and from private practice physicians, is to improve and restore quality of life, and function, which the mainstream medical community clearly tried to get to her.
I have had a chance to look at Dr. Nelson's analysis of the brain tissue, and essentially, as a clinician, these are my thoughts.
The autopsy results confirmed my opinion and Dr. Maxfield's opinions, that the frontal areas of the brains, the areas that deal with awareness and cognition were relatively intact. To use Dr. Nelson's words, "relatively preserved." In fact, the relay areas from the frontal and front temporal regions of the brain, to the spinal cord and the brain stem, by way of the basal ganglia, were preserved, thus the evident responses which she was able to express to her family and to the clinicians seeing her or viewing her videotape. The Spect scan confirmed these areas were functional and not scar tissue, and that was apparently also confirmed on Dr. Nelson's review of the slides. Dr. Maxfield's estimates of retained brain weight were apparently accurate, although there may have been some loss of brain weight due to the last two weeks of dehydration.
Dr. Maxfield and myself both emphasized that she was a woman trapped in her body, similar to a child with cerebral palsy, and that was born out by the autopsy, showing greater injury in the motor and visual centers of the brain. Obviously, the pathologists comments that she could not see were not borne out by reality, and thus his assessment must represent sampling error. The videotapes clearly showed her seeing, and even Dr. Cranfoed, for the husband, commented to her that, when she could see the balloon, she could follow it with her eyes as per his request.
That she could not swallow was obviously not borne out by the reality that she was swallowing her saliva, about 1.5 liters per day of liquid, and the clinical swallowing tests done by Dr. Young and Dr. Carpenter. Thus, there appears to be some limitations to the clinical accuracy of an autopsy in evaluating function.
With respect to the issue of trauma, that certainly does not appear to be answered adequately. Some of the types of trauma that are suspected were not adequately evaluated in this assessment. Interestingly, both myself and at least one neurologist for the husband testified to the presence of neck injuries. The issue of a forensic evaluation for trauma, is highly specialized. Hence the wish of the family to have observers which was refused by the examiner.
Ultimately, based on the clinical evidence and the autopsy results, an aware woman was killed.
s/Dr. W. Hammesfahr
[Dr. Hammesfahr was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1999. The Nomination was for work started in 1994. In 2000, this work resulted in approval for the first patent in history granted for the treatment of neurological diseases including coma, stroke, brain injury, cerebral palsy, hypoxic injuries and other neurovascular disorders with medications that restore blood flow to the brain. It was extended to treat successfully disabilities including ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette's and Autism as well as behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children, seizures and severe migraines.]
The presumption -- just like as the murderer Greer applied it in Florida -- was death. It was Greer's direct order that Terri be forcibly starved and dehydrated until dead. Not even Micheal Schiavo was allowed to stop it -- even had he asked that she be let live. Greer's order was clear -- he, Greer, had determined what Terri's wishes were. And She wished to die.
The presumption that the disabled who are unable to communicate are better dead, that they'd wish to die -- that's exactly the same as the Third Reich.
The coroner knows more about her physical condition from the autopsy than some charlatan doctor that spent a few hours with her observing her as he planned how he could bilk her parents and generate publicity for himself. And he knows more than Dr Frist did from his cross country diagnosis that he know says he never made. Sounds kind of Clintonion, "I never made a diagnosis with that woman, Schiavo."
I read it. The obvious abormalities that would be indicated by a midline shift that was mentioned would be caused intracranial pressure, possibly caused by an aneurism, for example. It could also be caused by increased pressure caused by intracranial bleeding from a blow to the head. She didn't have that. Her brain was damaged due to anoxia caused by her cardiac arrest. That she had cardiac arrest isn't in question, because she was defibbed 7 times by the paramedics, and they don't get out the paddles unless there is a fibrillation of the heart (cardiac arrest). She was decerebrating. That doesn't fall into the "no obvious abormalities" category. The brain tissue was dying due to lack of oxygen - it shows up later on cat scans after the macrophages clean up the dead tissue, and you see areas of the brain where cerebrospinal fluid replaces the dead tissue.
I am indeed "on the side of those allowing some to decide the death of others."
My mother has made her wishes quite clear - if she's ever in a PVS, I am to remove her feeding tube and let her die. She has placed these instructions in writing, and you daren't stop me from carrying out her wishes if that terrible day ever comes.
If you were to say "we don't know Terri's wishes and therefore ought to err on the side of keeping her alive," I would concede your point. But to argue that all PVS patients must be kept alive at all costs just because we have the technology to do so, regardless of any discussion of whether or not we have the wisdom to use that technology, well that's a very extreme view and one that I cannot respect.
I pray that my mother never finds herself in that position but if she does, woe to the meddler that interferes with me carrying out her last wish.
"The way some posters here brandish his forged, credentials I'm starting to believe that they think he did."
You guys were probably skeptical of Jethro Bodine actually becoming a brain surgeon too?
You know he mentioned it to Uncle Jed over several shows and I'm certain he achieved this noble accomplishment.
(Rumor has it, Jethro actually built the radio out of a coconut and not the professor. - He was a double-naught spy you know - Still looking for conformation.)
I suppose he was a lying quack too.
This is a serious question and not a jab. Are you in the medical field? If so, I have some questions.
*sigh* Contractures occur when the cerebrum is badly damaged, as Mrs. Schiavo's was. Yes, they also occur due to lack of muscle use, such as with a person with spinal injury. That isn't the case here. And the stiff neck? She had that upon showing up in the emergency room, and the diagnosis and reason for the stiff neck was decerebration. That doesn't go away, because nobody grow new cerebral tissue.
Thank you and saved.
Below is the link to the Wolfson report to Jeb Bush; widely regarded as the most thorough history.
http://home.comcast.net/~trinity_tx/wolfson.htm
Since when are we allowed to commit suicide?
And, exactly what we are fighting are people like you that want the legal right to kill those you determine would not want to live in their condition. Of course, you do not have the authority to judge their life as you only have authority over your life.
Why are you to have the power to decide whether your relative dies today or a year from now (unless given that power of medical authority in writing by the relative)?
All you need is that piece of paper. But, without it - you are taking on yourself the role of instigating death - killing. And, it is wrong.
And, don't expect me to ever promote that.
When you allow by law one person to decide when a person should no longer live - you allow all men the right to decide when others should no longer live. You allow murder of unprotected victims because it is free murder without jail time.
You allow abusive parents, to easily decide a child would not want to live once they gave them a concussion. Free murder.
You allow the insurance companies, social programs to clear the rolls of the more costly (of course, allowing their costlies to stay).
When you give man the right to judge the right of a person to live - you take away the inalienable right to life given by God, you set man up as the purveyor of death in place of a just God and you give free reign to all who might want to use that power for their own profit.
Now I would ask that all reading these threads think what you do when you support the right for other men to decide when and under what conditions you and your family may live.
You say that as if "your side," as you all have come to call it, has never said anybody who disagrees with your take on this story is a liar and/or a quack.
In fact, it would be easier to make a list of the people you all DON'T think are lying, than to try to forumate a list of the liars on "the other side."
"If she had had daily range of motion therapy, those contractures would have been far less severe."
How much did she receive?
I suggest you read the report by Dr. Cheshire of the DCF who examined Terri during the fifth day of her last DEHYDRATION/STARVATION linked at post #303.
Was he a Charlatan too?
I suggest you read the report by Dr. Cheshire of the DCF who examined Terri during the fifth day of her last DEHYDRATION/STARVATION linked at post #303.
Was he a Charlatan too?
You're not saying that a coroner should see a patient before they'd dead to make an accurate diagnosis, are you?
I am not, but I've had pre-med courses in college (I was a biology major), and am closely related to an internal medicine doc, whom I ask these sorts of questions of. I also look up things like the structures and functions of the brain in medical reference matterials.
It could be that it was brought on by her physical condition and not an attack.
You couldn't be more wrong.
There are thousands of families a year in this country who decide to terminate various life saving equipment, including feeding tubes. Many of these decisions are made without benefit of a living will.
Previous to this case, only 30% of the people in the country were believed to have living wills and many of those were outdated.
Spouses have always been the determining factor in these cases and it has nothing to do with disability.
Do you know how silly you sound, talking about suicide? Most of these people we are talking about are already clinically or brain dead.
All I know is that I want to retain the right to self determination and not have a bunch of people I do not know try to push their morality on me, and most of those people are trying to further the pro life agenda of the innocent unborn to other areas of life.
I don't believe much from the AMA any more, but if you can cite a blanket condemnation of hyperbaric medicine by the AMA, I'd like to see it. The reason for my interest is not Dr. Hammesfahr but another physician in the field (whom I mentioned to you earlier). He is a man of great distinction and accomplishment and I don't think you'd ever hear the end of it if the AMA tried to tell him his professional credentials didn't rank with the best.
Did he testify under oath the way nearly a dozen neurologists and other doctors did? Then his testimony is as meaningless as those nurses who said that Terri could eat on her own and was talking.
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