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.
An induced coma – also known as a medically induced coma (MIC), barbiturate-induced coma, or drug-induced coma – is a temporary coma (a deep state of unconsciousness) brought on by a controlled dose of an anesthetic drug, often a barbiturate such as pentobarbital or thiopental.
Severe injuries can cause permanent unconsciousness. Of people with severe injuries, 60% to 80% survive. Many of those who survive are completely unconscious for some period.
A coma can result from complications of conditions such as diabetes or an infection, or from a traumatic incident involving a blow to the head or a lack of oxygen. Doctors sometime induce a coma to protect a person from pain and complications during the healing process.
On Aug. 6, 1941, 6-year-old Elaine Esposito went to the hospital for a routine appendectomy. She went under general anesthetic and never came out. Dubbed the "sleeping beauty," Esposito stayed in a coma for 37 years and 111 days before succumbing in 1978 — the longest-ever coma, according to Guinness World Records.
Can Your Loved One Hear You? During a coma, the individual is unconscious, meaning they are unable to respond to any sounds. However, the brain may still be able to pick up on sounds from loved ones. In fact, some studies suggest talking and touching a loved one while they are in a coma may help them recover.
Over time, the person may start to gradually regain consciousness and become more aware. Some people will wake up after a few weeks, while others may go into a vegetative or minimally conscious state.
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.
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'.
Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and has minimal brain activity. It is not possible to wake a coma patient using physical or auditory stimulation. They're alive, but can't be woken up and show no signs of being aware.
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.
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].
"Pulling the plug" would render the patient unable to breathe, and the heart would stop beating within minutes, he said. But if a patient is not brain dead and instead has suffered a catastrophic neurological brain injury, DiGeorgia said, he or she could breathe spontaneously for one or two days before dying.
If we pinch their hand, they will move it away. But these signs of consciousness are not always evident, nor do we see them in every patient. A patient who awakens from a coma may also develop a so-called locked-in syndrome, being completely conscious but paralyzed and unable to communicate, except through eye blinks.
Whether they dream or not probably depends on the cause of the coma. If the visual cortex is badly damaged, visual dreams will be lost; if the auditory cortex is destroyed, then they will be unable to hear dreamed voices.
Physicians may not talk to comatose patients for several reasons. 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.
Coma patients might feel pleasure and pain like the rest of us.
A vegetative state is similar to a coma but isn't the same. People in a vegetative state have recovered enough that they aren't in a coma, but their brain's abilities and activity are still very limited. The potential for recovery from a vegetative state varies widely.
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.
Being comatose is being in a coma, unconscious and unable to communicate, often for long periods of time. A bad illness or unexpected accident or injury — especially to the head — can make you comatose and trapped inside a body that isn't working.
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.