Time is the best general predictor of a chance of recovery. For example, after four months of coma caused by brain damage, the chance of partial recovery is less than 15%, and the chance of full recovery is very low.
It can be seen that the likelihood of a good recovery in all patients is only 10%. It is less than 5% in those who have suffered subarachnoid haemorrhage or stroke, about 10% in those with hypoxic–ischaemic injury, but as high as 25% in those metabolic or infective causes of coma.
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. Most people do come out of comas.
Approximately 60% of moderate brain injury survivors will make a full and functional recovery, while the statistics for severe brain injury recovery are even lower.
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.
People in a coma will not age like conscious people living life. Muscles weaken & emaciate. The damaged part of the brain might deteriorate as a result of inflammation to the area.
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.
A coma rarely lasts more than 2 to 4 weeks. Some patients may regain a degree of awareness after persistent vegetative state. Others may remain in that state for years or even decades. The most common cause of death for someone in a persistent vegetative state is infection, such as pneumonia.
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.
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.
A coma is a deep state of unconsciousness that has many possible causes. A doctor may sometimes need to induce a coma to protect a person from severe complications or pain. This may be necessary if a person has a serious medical condition, infection, or a traumatic accident, such as a blow to the head.
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.
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].
Yet many people who have recovered from comas report dreams into which something of the outside world penetrated. Others recall nightmares that seemed to go on and on. Whether they dream or not probably depends on the cause of the coma.
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.
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.
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.
If a patient is comatose for several weeks, which rarely happens, he or she is considered to be in a persistent vegetative state, which can become permanent. Patients may remain in this state for decades if all medical complications are treated aggressively.
Clinically, a coma can be defined as the inability consistently to follow a one-step command. It can also be defined as a score of ≤ 8 on the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) lasting ≥ 6 hours.
Music therapists such as Lee Anna Rasar at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire often use music to try to evoke responses from comatose patients. She notes that songs are most effective “if the music is something they knew before that already had meaning.”
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.
People in a coma are completely unresponsive. They do not move, do not react to light or sound and cannot feel pain.
Coma of less than 15 minutes (concussion) occurred in 11 of 13 animals subjected to sagittal head motion, in 2 of 6 animals with oblique head motion, and in 2 of 26 animals with full lateral head motion.
A coma is a state of unconsciousness you can't be awakened from. The brain doesn't go through normal sleep cycles and you can't move in response to pain. Comas are caused by brain damage from head injuries or illness. If damage is in certain key regions of the brain, recovery may not be possible.