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 state of coma are alive but are unable to move or be aware of or respond to their surroundings. They lose their thinking abilities but retain non-cognitive function and normal sleep patterns. A person may appear fine, but will not able to speak or respond to commands.
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'.
Post-traumatic amnesia typically occurs after a survivor wakes up from a coma, a period of unconsciousness. During this time the survivor may not be able to recall certain memories. This can last from a few minutes to a couple weeks, depending on the severity of the brain injury.
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].
The experience of being in a coma differs from person to person. Some people feel they can remember events that happened around them while they were in a coma, while others don't.
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.
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).
Other studies have shown that up to 20 percent of patients in various vegetative states can hear and respond on at least some level. But at least some of the responses seen could be dismissed as simple reflexes, or at best akin to someone in a dream state responding to stimuli.
Such a person exhibits a complete absence of wakefulness and is unable to consciously feel, speak, hear or move. Such a person is called brain dead but as the body system is functioning, the person is considered as living.
Pupillary light reflex (PLR) is simply the change in pupil size that occurs after a light stimulus. It provides information on the brainstem integrity in the comatose patients (15). A transient flash of light within 3 s–5 s will produce a decrease in pupil size.
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. Q. Assertion :Brian-dead patient lying in coma has no self-consciousness.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How long will post-traumatic amnesia last? PTA may last for a few minutes, hours, days, weeks or even, in rare cases, months. Certain types of medication have been used to try to improve the condition, with varying degrees of success.
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.
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.
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.
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.