LARGO, Fla., June 15 (UPI) -- An autopsy on Terri Schiavo found the Florida woman suffered irreversible brain damage, was blind and would not have been able to feed herself or recover.
"Her brain was profoundly atrophied," said Dr. Jon Thogmartin, medical examiner for Pinellas-Pasco County at a Wednesday news conference. "There was massive neuronal loss, or death.
"This was irreversible and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
Thogmartin said Schiavo's brain was about half the weight of a normal human brain at the time of her death. Her condition was consistent "with a persistent vegetative state."
She would not have survived for 15 years without a feeding tube, CNN said.
The finding backed her husband, Michael, who won a seven-year fight to have her feeding tube removed in March. She died March 31, 2005 at age 41.
Schiavo lapsed into a coma in February 1990 after her heart temporarily stopped beating.
