People enter a vegetative state after waking from a coma that is caused by:
- either a traumatic brain injury
- or a non-traumatic brain injury
Either of these brain injuries will be severe enough to have caused extensive damage to the parts of the brain responsible for higher brain functions, such as thinking and awareness.
Traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury occurs when an object or outside force causes severe trauma to the brain.
The most common causes of traumatic brain injuries are
- falls
- traffic accidents
- violent assault
For more informationc, read about severe head injury.
Non-traumatic brain injury
Non-traumatic brain injuries can occur if:
- A person has a health condition that deprives their brain of oxygen, as without a continuous supply of oxygen the tissue that makes up the brain will begin to die.
- A person has a health condition that directly attacks the tissue of their brain.
Specific causes of non-traumatic brain injury include:
- strokes
- heart attacks
- severe brain infections, such as meningitis (an infection of the outer layer of the brain) or encephalitis (an infection of the brain itself)
- conditions that cause progressive damage to the cells and tissue of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease
- brain tumour
- drug overdoses
- poisoning
- near drowning or other types of suffocation, such as smoke inhalation
- a blood vessel bursting leading to bleeding inside the brain – the medical term for this is a ruptured aneurysm
- the kidneys or liver stop working (kidney failure and liver failure) – both of these organs are responsible from removing toxins from the body so if they stop working toxins can build up inside the brain damaging it
