• Question: how are comas caused?

    Asked by anon-189385 to Yousef, Rachel, Petrina, Michael, Jason on 14 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Mike Ambler

      Mike Ambler answered on 14 Nov 2018:


      Hi Lauren,

      Thanks for yor quesiton. ‘Coma’ is a word we use to describe somebody who is unconscious and can’t be woken up by the normal things that wake a person up, say from sleep. There are really two types of coma. One type is when somebody has an injury to their brain, like if they are hit on the head very hard or if they have a stroke. Sometimes after a brain injury the brain doesn’t work properly and so they are unconscious and in a coma. This can last from a very short time (like when we are ‘knocked out’) or potentially much longer (like years). The other kind is what we sometimes call a ‘medically-induced coma’. This is where a person is very unwell and in the intensive care an needs to be put in a coma so that we can treat them. This is sometimes done for people who have had a bit of a brain injury but haven’t gone into a coma on their own, so we do it using medications so that the brain can essentially be rested. Other times, there is no actual problem with the brain but we want to put the person into a coma so that we can do other treatments: like put them on a machine to help them breathe. It would be very uncomfortable to be on one of these machines while awake so we then put the patient into a ‘medically-induced coma’ in order to make it more comfortable for the patient. When they are better, we stop giving the medication that keeps them unconscious and they wake up!

Comments