Ottawa Lawyer: What is the Glasgow Coma Scale?
If you or someone you love has suffered a serious Ottawa personal injury, especially one that involves neurological damage, you may have heard of the Glasgow Coma Scale. The following will offer a general overview of this medical scale, but your Ottawa personal injury lawyer will be able to give you more detailed information.
The GCS is used to assess the neurological state of an individual, or in other words, their level of consciousness. This is usually done for an initial assessment, soon after the injury, and is also used periodically throughout an individual’s recovery to assess any progress. The Glasgow Coma Scale involves measuring a person against the criteria of the scale. This assessment results in a number ranging from three (deeply unconscious) to fifteen.
The Glasgow Coma Scale assesses an individual’s eye response, verbal response and motor response. Each of these criteria has a variety of specific responses that doctors look for and document. For example, an individual’s eye responses can range from not opening their eyes, to opening them spontaneously. Similarly, verbal responses can include no sounds, incomprehensible sounds, confused speech and normal conversation. Motor responses assess an individual’s movement and this can range from no movement at all, to various forms of reaction to stimuli, including withdrawal from painful stimuli and obeying commands to move.
If you know of someone who has experienced severe Ottawa personal injury, such as head trauma, they will likely be assessed with the Glasgow Coma Scale. While this may be overwhelming and certainly an uncertain time, rest assured that the doctors involved in your case will do the best they can to help you or your loved one recover. In such situations, it is also important to have a good personal injury lawyer who can manage all of your legal affairs. Regardless of the outcome of the initial medical assessment or any assessments during recovery, you can trust that your Ottawa personal injury lawyer will diligently work on your legal case.
