A man who was in a "coma" for 23 years has reportedly revealed that he was conscious the whole time.

Rom Houben, 46, was paralysed after a car crash and diagnosed as being in a persistent vegatative state, the Daily Mail reports.

Houben said: "I screamed, but there was nothing to hear. I dreamed myself away.

"All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt."

Doctors are believed to have used a range of tests to conclude that Houben's consciousness was "extinct", before more high-tech equipment showed him to have almost normal brain function.

Dr Steven Laureys said: "'Medical advances caught up with him."