Can you open your eyes and still be in a coma?

Some patients awaken from coma (that is, open the eyes) but remain unresponsive (that is, only showing reflex movements without response to command). This syndrome has been coined vegetative state

vegetative state

A persistent vegetative state (PVS) or post-coma unresponsiveness (PCU) is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness.

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Persistent vegetative state - Wikipedia

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Can a coma patients open their eyes?

The classical definition of coma denotes unarousable unresponsiveness with absent sleep–wake cycles and closed eyes, but comatose patients may defy that definition by showing eye-opening early after brain injury.

Can you be in a coma but awake?

What is vegetative state? A vegetative state is when a person is awake but showing no signs of awareness. On recovery from the coma state, VS/UWS is characterised by the return of arousal without signs of awareness.

Can a person with no brain activity open their eyes?

There's a difference between brain death and a vegetative state, which can occur after extensive brain damage. Someone in a vegetative state can show signs of wakefulness – for example, they may open their eyes, but not respond to their surroundings.

How long can you be in a coma before brain damage?

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.

What It's Like To Be In A Coma

Can someone in a coma hear you?

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.

Can your brain fully work during a coma?

When someone is in a coma, they cannot interact with their environment. The brain is still working, however, and the degree of brain activity varies from patient to patient. New tools for mapping brain activity have helped doctors illuminate what is happening inside the brain, which informs their treatment and care.

How does it feel to be in coma?

"Being in a coma is like a magnified and intense version of our own dreams," she said. "Everything that happens in the real world, you hear, you're aware of, you kind of know what's going on, but it goes through this weird filter thing in your brain."

Why can't you wake someone from a coma?

Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and will not respond to voices, other sounds, or any sort of activity going on nearby. The person is still alive, but the brain is functioning at its lowest stage of alertness. You can't shake and wake up someone who is in a coma like you can someone who has just fallen asleep.

How can you tell if someone is in a coma?

What keeps someone alive in a coma?

The vast majority continue to be kept alive via hydration and nutrition delivered through a feeding tube.

How do doctors know if someone is in a coma?

CT scan. This uses a series of X-rays to create a detailed image of the brain. A CT scan can show bleeding in the brain, tumors, strokes and other conditions. This test is often used to diagnose and determine the cause of a coma.

Does a person in a coma know they are alive?

Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and has minimal brain activity. They're alive, but can't be woken up and show no signs of being aware. The person's eyes will be closed and they'll appear to be unresponsive to their environment.

What are the chances of surviving a coma?

Depth of coma

Those who show no motor response have a 3% chance of making a good recovery whereas those who show flexion have a better than 15% chance.

When do they pull the plug in a coma?

In the vernacular of the house officer, pulling the plug means discontinuing life support in a badly damaged patient whose survival is highly unlikely.

Do u dream in a coma?

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.

Do people in comas age?

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. However, stress is low.

Does the body move while in a coma?

People in a coma are completely unresponsive. They do not move, do not react to light or sound and cannot feel pain. Their eyes are closed. The brain responds to extreme trauma by effectively 'shutting down'.

Should you talk to someone in a coma?

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.

Who woke up from the longest coma?

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.

Is a coma like sleep?

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.

Do people in a coma have memories?

The experience of being in a coma differs from person to person. Some people feel they can remember events that happened around them while they were in a coma, while others don't.

How do coma patients wake up?

They may be able to breathe on their own, although some people require a machine to help them breathe. Over time, the person may start to gradually regain consciousness and become more aware. Some people will wake up after a few weeks, while others may go into a vegetative state or minimally conscious state.

What are the 6 types of comas?

How long will hospitals keep you in a coma?

Typically, a coma does not last more than a few days or couple of weeks. In some rare cases, a person might stay in a coma for several weeks, months or even years. Depending on what caused the person to go into a coma, some patients are able to return to their normal lives after leaving the hospital.