[The care of adults in persistent vegetative state--a new challenge to nursing science?].
German scientists assume that new problems in nursing practice can be credited to an increasing number of accident-based long-term handicaps (Robert Bosch Stiftung 1996). This hypothesis is supported by epidemiological data as elaborated in the following article. Furthermore the critical examination of the terms "apallic syndrome" and "persistent vegetative state" leads up to the question which medical assumptions in relation to the phenomenon of the apallic syndrome are transferred to nursing. According to Feuser (1995) and for noted reason the medical perspective on the apallic syndrome appears to be similar to what can be observed in the practice of psychiatric care. This inheritance of medicine offers a new challenge to the nursing discipline which consequently will have to strengthen the own science.