World's Oldest Comatose Patient Aruna Shanbaug Dead After 42 Years in Coma

Aruna Shanbaug was the Indian nurse who was raped and strangled with a chain in 1973. It cut off oxygen to her brain stem, leaving her comatose for 42 years.

Indian nurse Aruna Shanbaug, world’s oldest comatose patient, who had been in a vegetative state ever since she was raped, died in KEM Hospital, Mumbai, after remaining in coma for almost 42 years.

Dean of the hospital, Avinash Supe, said that police permissions and other formalities are being completed before finalizing Shanbaug’s last rites. Supe has made a public appeal to help trace any relatives or people close to Shanbaug who can get in touch with the hospital immediately.

Coma - Causes Symptoms Treatment FAQs
Coma is a deep state of unconsciousness where the affected individual is alive but is not able to react or respond to external stimuli. The outcome ranges from full recovery to death.

A junior nurse, Shanbaug was brutally raped by contract sweeper boy Sohanlal B. Walmiki in the same hospital on the night of November 27, 1973 when she was changing.

He sodomized her and choked her with a dog chain which cut off oxygen supply to her brain, resulting in injuries to the brain stem and cervical chord injury that left her in a vegetative state since then.

Source-Medindia

Decreased Consciousness - Symptom Evaluation
Consciousness can be decreased to various degrees and result in conditions like delirium, stupor, coma, persistent vegetative state, minimal conscious state and brain death.

MGH Scientists Develop Automated System to Put Patients in Medically Induced Coma
Researchers have developed a new computer-controlled system through which physicians can automate the process of putting patients with severe head injuries into a medically induced coma.

ICU Patients Benefit from Wake Up and Breathe Program
Waking intensive care unit patients and having them breathe on their own can help reduce the use of sedation levels and also coma prevalence, find researchers.