quote:

Autopsy: No sign Schiavo was abused
Findings show Schiavo's brain 'profoundly atrophied'

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Posted: 3:25 PM EDT (1925 GMT)

LARGO, Florida (CNN) -- The autopsy of Terri Schiavo found no evidence that the severely brain-damaged woman was strangled or abused and that no amount of therapy would have reversed her condition, medical examiners said Wednesday.
Schiavo's brain was damaged in 1990 after she collapsed and suffered heart failure.

Schiavo, 41, died March 31 at a Pinellas Park, Florida, hospice 13 days after her feeding tube was removed by a judge's order.

Jon Thogmartin, medical examiner for Florida's District Six, which includes Pasco and Pinellas counties, said the cause of death was "marked dehydration."

Thogmartin said that the autopsy did not determine the cause of her collapse. He released her autopsy results Wednesday.

He said his examination turned up no sign of abuse or trauma -- allegations leveled by Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, against her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo.

A report from a neuropathologist who served as a consultant to the autopsy said Schiavo's brain was "grossly abnormal and weighed only 615 grams (1.35 pounds)." That weight is less than half of that expected for a woman of her age, said the report written by Dr. Stephen J. Nelson...

...Schiavo's brain damage "was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," Thogmartin said.

He said, the vision centers of her brain were dead, meaning she was blind. And his examination showed she would have been unable to take nourishment by mouth because of the danger she might aspirate the food.

But without removal of the feeding tube, and if conditions such as pneumonia and urinary tract infections -- common in bed-ridden patients -- were treated, Terri Schiavo could have lived another decade, Thogmartin estimated.

"Their report shows what we have said -- that Terri was not terminal," said the Schindlers' attorney, David Gibbs. "Terri Schiavo was not in an end-of-life situation. The decision was made to end her life, and we believe it was done in a barbaric manner."