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.
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.
A coma rarely lasts beyond two to four weeks. A coma may be the result of several conditions, including: Traumatic head injury—A severe traumatic brain injury. Stroke—A lack of or interrupted blood flow to the brain.
Most comas do not last for more than two to four weeks, but there are patients who have woken after decades. The story of how Munira Abdulla spontaneously woke from a coma after 27 years has shed light on how someone could come back to life after decades of unconsciousness.
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.
Most people do come out of a coma
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.
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.
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.
Usually, a coma does not last more than a few weeks. Sometimes, however, a person stays in a coma for a long time — even years — and will be able to do very little except breathe on his or her own.
Brain death is not the same as coma, because someone in a coma is unconscious but still alive. Brain death occurs when a critically ill patient dies sometime after being placed on life support. This situation can occur after, for example, a heart attack or stroke.
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.
Someone in a coma needs intensive care in hospital. They may need help with breathing, they will be fed through a tube and they will receive blood and fluids through a drip inserted into the vein.
The person's eyes will be closed and they'll appear to be unresponsive to their environment. 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.
Because patients who are in a coma can't eat or drink on their own, they receive nutrients and liquids through a vein or feeding tube so that they don't starve or dehydrate. Coma patients may also receive electrolytes -- salt and other substances that help regulate body processes.
Coma patients might feel pleasure and pain like the rest of us.
Severe brain injury is usually defined as being a condition where the patient has been in an unconscious state for 6 hours or more, or a post-traumatic amnesia of 24 hours or more. These patients are likely to be hospitalised and receive rehabilitation once the acute phase has passed.
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].
Researchers have noted that lucid dreamers are not psychologically better than non-lucid ones. Lucid dreaming can disrupt sleeping patterns and negatively affect mental health. It can make psychosis worse for some individuals and exhibits no benefits for anyone with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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. Yet many people who have recovered from comas report dreams into which something of the outside world penetrated.
"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 a deep-fried oreo were given to a Victorian child, that child would fall into a coma probably from the cholesterol alone. But they would be revived by the delicious flavor of the gooey insides of the Oreo.
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.