"Coma" is the medical condition of deep, prolonged unconsciousness, while "comatose" is the adjective describing someone in that state (e.g., "a comatose patient"), meaning they are unresponsive, unaware, and unable to wake up, often due to brain disruption from injury, illness, or lack of oxygen. Essentially, coma is the noun (the state), and comatose is the adjective (describing the person in that state).
/ˈkoʊmətoʊs/ /ˈkʌʊmətəʊs/ 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.
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 unconsciousness in which a patient does not react with the surrounding environment. 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.
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.
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. Comatose patients may, however, hear; many have normal brain-stem auditory evoked responses and normal physiologic responses to auditory stimuli.
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.
Over time, someone in a coma may start to gradually regain consciousness and become more aware. Some people will wake up – the length of time a person spends in a coma can vary from days to months. Other patients may never regain consciousness and wake up.
Brain activity study suggests as many as one in four people in comas have some awareness of their surroundings.
Sometimes the cause of a coma can be completely reversed, and the affected person regains function. Recovery usually occurs gradually. A person with severe brain damage might have permanent disabilities or never regain consciousness.
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. After the patients in the true story Awakenings, Shapiro spent the longest time in a coma-like state before waking up. Her story inspired the 1998 movie Forever Love.
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).
Minimally conscious state: You'll have slow or inconsistent responses to sound, touch or sight, including opening your eyes. This stage is one of the early signs of coming out of a coma.
Coma symptoms
These include: Unconsciousness (a deep sleep with no response to stimuli) Lack of eye response (eyes closed with no response to light or movement) Lack of motor response (limbs don't respond or voluntarily move)
When people are in comas, they are unconscious and cannot communicate with their environment. They cannot speak and their eyes are closed. They look as if they are asleep. However, the brain of a coma patient may continue to work.
Patients may not have control of their bowel or bladder. Catheters or diapers will be used until bowel and bladder control returns.
A coma happens when you're unconscious, unresponsive and unaware of what's going on around you. You can't wake up, think, talk, respond to a conversation or react to the feeling of pain. There are several possible causes, like brain injuries, stroke, complications from substance use or infections, among others.
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.
The coma patient is a particular and unique patient: he depends completely on the caregivers, more than a neonate. The bed bath of a coma patient is important to maintain his personal hygiene, to clean and refresh, to monitor skin condition and to promote comfort.
Patients are fed enterally (via a feeding tube placed into the gastrointestinal tract) or, if their digestive system is not functioning well, parenterally (via an intravenous catheter placed into a vein).
To end the coma, doctors begin reducing the medication that placed the patient in the coma in the first place. This allows the patient to wake up gradually. The goal remains to eventually withdraw the medication completely and change the ventilator to a mode that allows the patient to develop breathing on their own.
Spontaneous movements may occur, and the eyes may open in response to external stimuli. Individuals may even occasionally grimace, cry, or laugh. Although individuals in a persistent vegetative state may appear somewhat normal, they do not speak and they are unable to respond to commands.
Prognosis. Comas can last from several days to, in particularly extreme cases, years. Some patients eventually gradually come out of the coma, some progress to a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state, and others die.
Conclusion. Continuing artificial life support for patients who are brain dead may produce harm to patients, families, and others involved. Declaration of brain death should not be delayed to wait for families or to justify hospital care. Instead, appropriate family care should be provided after the death declaration.
Coma rarely lasts more than 4 weeks. Some patients move from coma to the VS. Others may move from coma to partial consciousness. It is rare for a person with severe brain injury to move directly from coma, or the VS, to full consciousness.