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 — and the severity determined by this scale can directly impact the compensation you’re entitled to pursue with the help of an experienced Los Angeles car accident lawyer.
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 opening, 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