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
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