Can someone in a coma squeeze your hand?

In conclusion, while it is possible for a comatose patient to exhibit reflex movements, including squeezing your hand, it is not necessarily an indication of conscious awareness. Coma recovery is a complex process, and the ability to regain consciousness varies from patient to patient.

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Can coma patients feel touch?

The patient is unable to respond to touch, sound, and other stimuli.

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Can coma patients move their hands?

People in a coma are completely unresponsive. They do not move, do not react to light or sound and cannot feel pain. Their eyes are closed. The brain responds to extreme trauma by effectively 'shutting down'.

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What are signs someone is coming out of a coma?

What are the signs of improvement?
  • Stage 1: Unresponsiveness. During this stage the patient does not respond consistently or appropriately. ...
  • Stage 2: Early responses. During this stage the patient starts to respond to things that are happening to them. ...
  • Stage 3: Agitated and confused. ...
  • Stage 4: Higher level responses.

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Can patients hear in a coma?

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.

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Coma patients respond to loved ones' voices, study shows

24 related questions found

How long will a hospital keep someone in a coma?

Generally, most patients at a hospital do come out of a coma. Typically, a coma does not last more than a few days or couple of weeks.

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Is a person aware that they are in a coma?

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 being aware. The person's eyes will be closed and they'll appear to be unresponsive to their environment.

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What are the odds of surviving a coma?

In patients with a scale from 5 to 7, 53% will die or remain in a vegetative state, while 34% will have a moderate disability and/or good recovery. In patients with a Glasgow Coma Scale of 8 to 10, 27% will die or remain in a coma, while 68% will have a moderate disability and/or good recovery.

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What are the 3 stages of coma?

Here are the major stages of coma that you need to know:
  • Stage 1: Unresponsiveness: ...
  • Stage 2: Early Responsiveness: ...
  • Stage 3: Agitation and confusion: ...
  • Stage 4: A higher level of responsiveness: ...
  • Traumatic brain injuries: ...
  • Stroke: ...
  • Lack of oxygen: ...
  • Infections:

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What is the last stage of coma patient?

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.

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What is posturing in a coma?

Decerebrate posturing involves a reflex movement of muscle groups throughout your body, causing your limbs to extend and hold rigidly. These movements can happen automatically when there's severe damage to your brain or major disruptions in brain function.

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Do you feel pain in a coma?

coma patients that are most aware of their environment react to pain as much as healthy people. Researchers who did the scans in Belgium say it justifies giving pain relief to all patients in this “minimally conscious state” (MCS).

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Do you dream in a coma?

A: Many people who have woken up from comas have reported having dreams in which they saw something from the outer world. Others have had dreams that seemed to stretch on and on. A person's ability to dream is most likely determined by the underlying medical condition that put them in a coma.

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What is a Level 5 coma?

The levels of response in the components of the Glasgow Coma Scale are 'scored' from 1, for no response, up to normal values of 4 (Eye-opening response) 5 ( Verbal response) and 6 (Motor response) The total Coma Score thus has values between three and 15, three being the worst and 15 being the highest.

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What is a Level 4 coma?

Level 4: confused - agitated. As the brain improves, it begins to “wake up” and may have difficulty controlling the level of response to the environment.

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What does it mean when a coma patient opens their eyes?

As soon as patients open their eyes, they are said to “awaken” from the coma. This does not, however, mean that a person is conscious. Most patients who awaken from a coma soon recuperate. But a minority will succumb to brain death; a brain that is dead is completely destroyed and cannot recover.

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What's it like waking up from a coma?

They said: 'The first few days was a genuine coma, after that it was induced by the doctors with ketamine. Waking up was kind of like emerging from deep waters. It took me a few days to actually be fully aware, I attribute that to the meds. 'Before that, it felt like time was skipping at random.

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What is the best way to wake someone up from a coma?

A coma stimulation programme (sometimes called a coma arousal programme) is an approach based on stimulating the unconscious person's senses of hearing, touch, smell, taste and vision individually in order to help their recovery.

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What are the 6 types of comas?

They are typically categorized in six ways:
  • Toxic-Metabolic Encephalopathy. When the kidneys or other organs fail, the body fails to dispose of any toxins correctly. ...
  • Cerebral Hypoxia. ...
  • Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) ...
  • Locked-In Syndrome. ...
  • Brain Death. ...
  • Medically Induced Coma.

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Is being in a coma like sleeping?

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 wide range of illnesses, conditions and events can cause coma.

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Do you age in a coma?

the cellular mechanism for ageing has been associated with progressive shortening of telomere length on the ends of each chromosome with each cell cycle.. in the contect of this, a coma wouldnt necessarily keep you young, but you would age just the same.

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What's the shortest amount of time you can be in a coma?

Comas can last from several days to, in particularly extreme cases, years. Some patients eventually gradually come out of the coma, some progress to a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state, and others die.

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Do hospitals clean coma patients?

Comatose patients rely heavily on their caretakers to bathe them, change them, and clean them if they soil themselves. If a patient is allowed to remain soiled, urine and feces can degrade the skin and increase the risk of a pressure sore as well as become a serious infection if there is already an open sore present.

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What happens to the brain during a coma?

In a coma, a patient is alive and there is some brain activity. Depending on the severity of the injury, recovery time varies and comas can be temporary or permanent. Patients in a coma might have brain stem responses, spontaneous breathing and/or non-purposeful motor responses.

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Who woke up from the longest coma?

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.

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