Hospital Patient Unidentified for Four Months
Hospital patient's family found after four-month search.
Dec. 14, 2010— -- For four months, a woman known only as Jane Doe lay in a bed in a Philadelphia hospital, alive but unable to do anything other than involuntary actions.
Staff at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania didn't know her name or how old she was, although they estimated she was in her 40s. They also didn't know exactly how she came to be in what her doctor says is a persistent vegetative state.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, she was transferred to Penn from another Philadelphia hospital, where paramedics rushed her after finding her in cardiac arrest in a park. It took doctors 45 minutes to get her heart beating again.
Dr. Charles Baillie, an attending physician at Penn who's been treating the woman for about two weeks, said she did not get enough oxygen to her brain during the time it took to resuscitate her.
"She can still do spontaneous things, like open her eyes, but she has no higher-level functioning and can't do anything purposefully," said Baillie. The condition, he said, is permanent.
Months after hospital staff started the search for the woman's identity and loved ones, With cases like this Jane Doe's, experts say it's vital to locate loved ones to make treatment decisions in the unidentified person's best interests. They also say there are many challenges when it comes to identifying and treating Jane or John Does because of regulations surrounding privacy and hospital responsibility.
