Cause of brain injury not revealed by autopsy

Read the Florida medical examiner's report for yourself

An autopsy of Terry Schiavo was unable to determine to any "reasonable medical certainty" what caused the 41-year-old Florida woman to fall into a vegetative state. According to the below report issued today by the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner, there was no evidence that Schiavo, whose medical plight triggered a national debate, had ever been abused. Opponents of Schiavo's husband Michael, who successfully fought to have Terry removed from life support, claimed that the woman had been severely injured at her husband's hands. But while Michael Schiavo contended that his wife's eating disorder likely caused her to go into cardiac arrest, the autopsy does not support that claim. The blind Schiavo, whose brain was about half its normal size at the time of her March 31 demise, died of dehydration (and not starvation) 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. She had been in what some doctors termed a "persistent vegetative state" since February 1990. (9 pages)