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Health Check: Michael Schumacher’s ‘Moments of Consciousness’

Michael Schumacher

09/04/2014

Michael Schumacher’s ‘Moments of Consciousness’

BBC World Service - Health Check, Michael Schumacher’s ‘Moments of Consciousness’

What does this tell us about his progress?

What do Schumacher’s ‘moments of consciousness’ tell us about his progress? Worldwide Ethiopia has the highest rates of trachoma - why? The characteristics of hoarding disorder

At the end of last week, Michael Schumacher’s agent stated that Schumacher was showing ‘moments of consciousness’. The motor racing champion has been in a medically-induced coma since the end of last year, when he fell and hit his head on a rock while skiing in the French Alps.  But how much can we read into these ‘moments of consciousness’ when it comes to predicting his chances of recovery? Neurosurgeon Professor Peter Hutchinson from Cambridge University, who is also the chief medical officer for the Formula 1 British Grand Prix, tells Health Check about the management of severe head injuries. 

Trachoma in Ethiopia
Every year across the world more than a million people go blind because a bacterial infection has caused damage to their eyes. Chlamydia, which is a type of bacteria that can be spread on towels, facecloths and even by flies, is responsible for the damage we see in trachoma. It is a huge public health problem in many parts of Africa and Asia. Chronic inflammation caused by the bacteria eventually causes the eyelashes to turn inwards, rubbing on the eye’s cornea and sometimes causing blindness. The BBC’s Angela Robson has been to Ethiopia which has the highest prevalence of trachoma in the world. 

Hoarding Disorder
Many of us are guilty of not throwing things away when we should. But this is very different from the serious condition of hoarding, which has been included in the latest version of the DSM-5, the American psychiatrists’ bible of disorders. Dr Ashley Nordsletten, based at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, has been researching hoarding disorder and recently published a paper on its epidemiology in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Picture: Michael Schumacher. Photographer, Clive Mason/Getty Images.

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