Man spends 23 years in a coma but was awake the entire time

Rom Houben, a 46-year-old Belgian who doctors believed was in a coma, caused by a car crash in 1983, had in fact been conscious for 23 years. Houben had heard the doctors, nurses and family speaking in his room for decades but could do nothing to tell them.

Doctors in Zolder, Belgium thought that a car accident left Rom Houben in a vegetative state, unable to understand what was going on around him. The doctors used the internationally accepted Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his eye, verbal and motor responses. However after doctors at the University of Liege reassessed his case, they found he was entirely conscious.

“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear” says Rom. All those years able to hear everyone around him, but unable to reach out; “frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt,” he said.

“Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt,” Houben said. “I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me - it was my second birth.”

Houben’s case spotlights the challenges doctors face when attempting to diagnose the level of consciousness of a patient in a coma-like state.

After a 16-month study of coma patients in the light of the Houben case, Laureys and his team discovered that 41 percent of people diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state showed signs of consciousness.