Routine treatment Keeping them alive requires good basic care (such as turning and changing position to manage skin integrity), a feeding tube, intermittent antibiotics for infections and perhaps some ongoing mechanical ventilation support (such as oxygen at night).
Comas usually don't last longer than 4 weeks, although cases have been recorded where people stay in a coma for several years. When someone comes out of a coma, they become more aware and regain consciousness gradually.
This means they can breathe, swallow and startle to stimuli such as loud noises, but have lost the higher brain functions that allow consciousness and personality. While comas usually only last a few weeks, a vegetative state can continue for months or even years.
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.
Closed eyes. Depressed brainstem reflexes, such as pupils not responding to light. No responses of limbs except for reflex movements. No response to painful stimuli except for reflex movements.
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.
As many as 15 to 20 percent of patients who appear to be in a coma or other unresponsive state show these inner signs of awareness when evaluated with advanced brain-imaging methods or sophisticated monitoring of electrical activity.
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.
Some examples of early responses to watch for are: Localized response: These are appropriate movements by the patient in response to sound, touch, or sight. Turning toward a sound, pulling away from something uncomfortable, or following movement with the eyes are examples.
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].
They won't normally respond to sound or pain, or be able to communicate or move voluntarily. Someone in a coma will also have very reduced basic reflexes such as coughing and swallowing. They may be able to breathe on their own, although some people require a machine to help them breathe.
Coma patients are monitored carefully through the following four stages of recovery before they can determine the full extent of their brain injury and prognosis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A person may appear fine, but will not able to speak or respond to commands. Spontaneous movements may occur, and the eyes may open in response to external stimuli. Individuals may even occasionally grimace, cry, or laugh.
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. This is called “agitation.” You will see the patient will have poor memory and be confused most of the day.
Duration of coma
The longer a patient remains in a coma the poorer his or her chance of recovery and the greater the chance that he or she will enter a vegetative state (table 3). By the third day the chance of making a moderate or good recovery is reduced to only 7%, and by the 14th day is as low as 2%.
On TV, it seems like someone in a coma wakes up right away, looks around, and is able to think and talk normally. But in real life, this rarely happens. When coming out of a coma, a person probably will be confused and only slowly respond to what's going on. It will take time for the person to start feeling better.
Hence, we can conclude that the patients lying in coma satisfy some living criterias. However, they have non-living features in behavioural and social aspects.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Elaine Esposito (December 3, 1934 – November 25, 1978) held the record for the longest period of time in a coma according to Guinness World Records, having lost consciousness in 1941 and eventually dying in that condition more than 37 years later.