Glasgow Coma Scale

Reminding myself about level of consciousness, and I hope it's useful for everybody. The Glasgow Coma Scale is a neurological scale which aims to give a reliable, objective way of recording the conscious state of a person, for initial as well as continuing assessment. A patient is assessed against the criteria of the scale, and the resulting points give the Glasgow Coma Score (or GCS). It has value in predicting ultimate outcome....

Elements of the scale are eye response, verbal response and motor response. There are four grades of eye response from the highest to the lowest :
4. Opening spontaneously
3. Response to voice
2. Response to pain stimuli
1. No response

Verbal Response contains of five grades from the highest to the lowest :
5. Oriented
4. Confused
3. Inappropriate words
2. Incomprehensible sounds
1. No response

Motor Response contains of six grades from the highest to the lowest :
6. Obeys commands
5. Localizes pain stimuli
4. Withdrawal from pain stimuli
3. Flexion/decorticate posturing
2. Extension/decerebrate posturing
1. No response

Generally comas are classified as :
Minor GCS : 13 or above
Moderate GCS : 9-12
Severe GCS : 8 or below

The GCS has limited applicability to children, especially below the age of 36 months because the verbal performance of even a healthy child would be expected to be poor.