Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and has minimal brain activity. They're alive but can't be woken up and show no signs of awareness. The person's eyes will be closed and they'll appear to be unresponsive to their environment.
Patients in coma show continuous absence of eye opening and any spontaneous or stimulus induced arousal or voluntary behavioural responses. Hence, they are neither awake nor aware.
'Coma patients can be subdivided into several types,' said Dr Guger. 'People who are genuinely in a coma have no cognitive function and no motor responses – they cannot think and they cannot move. But some people may appear to be in a coma even though they are in fact conscious to some degree. '
People in a coma are completely unresponsive. They do not move, do not react to light or sound and cannot feel pain.
People who do wake up from a coma usually come round gradually. They may be very agitated and confused to begin with. Some people will make a full recovery and be completely unaffected by the coma. Others will have disabilities caused by the damage to their brain.
Usually, coma patients have their eyes closed and cannot see what happens around them. But their ears keep receiving sounds from the environment. In some cases, the brains of coma patients can process sounds, for example the voice of someone speaking to them [2].
A comatose patient may open his eyes, move and even cry while still remaining unconscious. His brain-stem reflexes are attached to a nonfunctioning cortex. Reflex without reflection.
Patients in a coma appear unconscious. They do not respond to touch, sound or pain, and cannot be awakened. Their brains often show no signs of the normal sleep-wakefulness cycle, which means they are unlikely to be dreaming.
People in a coma will not age like conscious people living life. Muscles weaken & emaciate. The damaged part of the brain might deteriorate as a result of inflammation to the area.
Comatose patients do not seem to hear or respond. Speaking may not affect their clinical outcome; time spent with them takes time away from other, more "viable" patients. Comatose patients may, however, hear; many have normal brain-stem auditory evoked responses and normal physiologic responses to auditory stimuli.
What Happens When Someone Is in a Coma? Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and will not respond to voices, other sounds, or any sort of activity going on nearby. The person is still alive, but the brain is functioning at its lowest stage of alertness.
Annie Shapiro (1913–2003) was a Canadian apron shop owner who was in a coma for 29 years because of a massive stroke and suddenly awakened in 1992. Apart from the patients in the true story Awakenings, Shapiro was the longest a person has been in a coma like state and woken up.
Within six hours of coma onset those patients who show eye opening have almost a one in five chance of achieving a good recovery whereas those who do not have a one in 10 chance. Those who show no motor response have a 3% chance of making a good recovery whereas those who show flexion have a better than 15% chance.
A coma doesn't usually last longer than several weeks. People who are unconscious for a longer time might transition to a lasting vegetative state, known as a persistent vegetative state, or brain death.
Individuals recovering from coma require close medical supervision. A coma rarely lasts more than 2 to 4 weeks. Some patients may regain a degree of awareness after persistent vegetative state. Others may remain in that state for years or even decades.
The soul of a person in a coma is still there, but mostly the vegetative part of it. You see, there are three aspects of a human soul—the vegetative, the sentient and the rational. The reason a person in a coma is still alive, though unconscious, is because of the vegetative part of the soul.
Coma is a state of consciousness that is similar to deep sleep, except no amount of external stimuli (such as sounds or sensations) can prompt the brain to become awake and alert. A person in a coma can't even respond to pain.
A coma is a prolonged state of unconsciousness. During a coma, a person is unresponsive to their environment. The person is alive and looks like they are sleeping. However, unlike in a deep sleep, the person cannot be awakened by any stimulation, including pain.
What is a coma? A coma, sometimes also called persistent vegetative state, is a profound or deep state of unconsciousness. Persistent vegetative state is not brain-death. An individual in a state of coma is alive but unable to move or respond to his or her environment.
It can be like one long out-of-body experience.
Some survivors liken comas to an uncanny experience where you're wondering if you're the only person feeling what you're feeling. "If I had to compare it to real life," one writes, "I'd say it's like when you hear your name in a crowd.
When Edwarda O'Bara died on 21 November 2012, she had survived 15,663 days (about 42 years) in a coma. Born in 1953, in Miami, Florida, O'Bara suffered a childhood history of diabetes, which she successfully managed with insulin.
“ Just several weeks before her death, Jim Scantlin had a good visit with his sister. “We hung out a lot and had a nice weekend,” he said. Sarah died of respiration issues and failing blood pressure.
Terry Wallis: 19-Year Coma
The accident left Wallis a quadriplegic, but amazingly, he was still alive upon arrival at a local hospital. After a few months, his coma had stabilized into a "minimally conscious state," but there was little reason to believe Wallis would survive and regain consciousness.
Typically, a coma does not last more than a few days or couple of weeks. In some rare cases, a person might stay in a coma for several weeks, months or even years. Depending on what caused the person to go into a coma, some patients are able to return to their normal lives after leaving the hospital.
Scantlin's speech is still limited. However, it seems that throughout her 20-year coma, she could see, hear, and understand what was going on around her. Shortly after she awoke, her father asked what she knew about events that had occurred years earlier.