Understanding the glasgow coma scale and what it means

The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is used to determining a patient’s level of consciousness following a traumatic brain injury in order to assess the level of severity of the injury. A score is assigned after a few simple tests, the lower the score is the more severe the brain injury.

The test is a quite simple one, which is reliable and does a great job diagnosing the consciousness of the victim of an acute brain injury. Although the GCS is such a simple task, it’s very crucial that it is done with complete accuracy—as the medical team will use the score to determine improvement or decompensation of the victim.

CALCULATING A VICTIM'S GLASGOW COMA SCORE

The GCS analyzes the patients based on three different bodily responses: eye ppening, motor response, and verbal response.

Each of the three use a scale to find a score ranging from 3 to 15. The lowest being 3 and highest being 15.

Eye Opening

• Spontaneously - 4 Points
• Verbal command, speech, or shout - 3 Points
• Pain - 2 Points
• No Response - 1 Point

Verbal Response

• Oriented - 5 Points
• Confused, but able to answer questions - 4 Points
• Inappropriate responses - 3 Points
• Unrecognizable speech - 2 Points
• No response - 1 Point
• Motor Response
• Obeys command - 6 Points
• Movement to pain - 5 Points
• Withdraws from pain - 4 Points
• Abnormal flexion - 3 Points
• Abnormal extension - 2 Points
• No response - 1 Point

The lower the score is the more severe the brain injury is. While every brain injury presents different signs and symptoms, the general classification is as follows:

• Severe - GCS 3-8
• Moderate - GCS 9-12
• Mild - 13-15